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Tungsten oxide nanopowders: pulse alternating current electrosynthesis, structure optimization and performance in a flow photocatalytic fuel cell

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Abstract

Photocatalytic fuel cell (PFC) is a promising technology to produce electrical energy from transformation of both light and chemical energy of waste products/biomass. Tungsten oxide (WO3) nanopowder is synthesized via a facile and ecologically sound top-down approach using pulse alternating current as an oxidant and aqueous ammonium chloride solution as an electrolyte without any surfactants and organic solvents. The large photocurrent density enhancement for WO3 nanopowder annealed at 500 °C demonstrates the importance of WO3 crystallinity in governing its photo-assisted water oxidation. The improved photoactivity of WO3-500 photoanode is due to reduction of the density of deep trap states boosting the charge transfer efficiency. The optimized WO3 photoanode was used to build up a solar light responsive PFC system with a Pt/C air-breathing cathode and the organic electron donors with different functional groups acting as fuels. The maximum power density value increases in the order of formic acid, glycerol, ethanol, and glucose. When glucose was used as the fuel, the WO3-Pt/C PFC obtained the highest power density (Pmax) and current density (Jmax) of 140.8 μW cm−2 and 704 μA cm−2, respectively. This study provides an efficient way for large-scale electrochemical preparation of WO3 nanopowders from bulk tungsten for solar light responsive waste products/biomass-fueled PFC system.

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The data that support all plots within this paper are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Shared Research Center “Nanotechnologies” of Platov South-Russian State Polytechnic University (NPI) for XRD and EDX investigations. The XPS studies were performed using facilities of the Shared Research Center “National center of investigation of catalysts” at Boreskov Institute of Catalysis. The TEM study was carried out on the equipment of the Center Collective Use “Materials Science and Metallurgy”.

Funding

The study was funded by Russian Science Foundation (no. 21–79-00079), https://rscf.ru/project/21-79-00079/.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Institute “Nanotechnologies and New Materials”, Platov South-Russian State Polytechnic University (NPI), Novocherkassk, Russia, 346428

    Anna Ulyankina, Anastasia Tsarenko, Tatyana Molodtsova, Aleksey Yatsenko, Alexandra Kuriganova & Nina Smirnova

  2. Department of Physical Materials Science, National University of Science and Technology (MISIS), Moscow, Russia, 119049

    Mikhail Gorshenkov

  3. Department of Investigation of Catalysts, Boreskov Institute of Catalysis, Novosibirsk, Russia, 630090

    Vasily Kaichev

Authors
  1. Anna Ulyankina
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Contributions

Conceptualization: AU; Investigation: AU, AT, TM, AY, MG, VK; Methodology: AU, AK; Writing—Original draft: AU; Writing—Review & editing: AU, NS; Funding acquisition: AU.

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Correspondence to Anna Ulyankina.

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Handling Editor: Naiqin Zhao

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Supplementary file 1 (DOCX 732 KB)

Flow photocatalytic fuel cell operation (MOV 30472 KB)

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Ulyankina, A., Tsarenko, A., Molodtsova, T. et al. Tungsten oxide nanopowders: pulse alternating current electrosynthesis, structure optimization and performance in a flow photocatalytic fuel cell. J Mater Sci 58, 11187–11197 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-023-08697-9

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