Abstract
Statement
of the Problem: The main contemporary industrial processes are based on fossil
fuels usage. Intensive fossil fuel application leads to the growing environment
pollution, causing the "greenhouse effect". During the 20th century
the CO2 concentration increased about 20%, being the main reason for average
temperature increase on Earth. This fact has already caused undesirable climate
changes, connected to animal and plants biodiversity disorder. United Nations
has recognized environment pollution effects and global actions to prevent it
have already been taken. From Stockholm conference held in 1972 and Kyoto in
1997, United Nations announced several declarations to stabilize gas emission
and decrease greenhouse effect. European Union has established main targets
until 2020, in the frame of Climate and Energy Package, to increase alternative
power sources usage and save environment. Thus, the further development of
water electrolysis and fuel cells catalysts (the subject of this work), as
environmental friendly, green technologies are extremely desirable, to
contribute to the environment protection and sustainable development. Hydrogen
– high efficiency and environmental friendly fuel, produced by water
electrolysis is used in low temperature fuel cells, while oxidative agent is
oxygen from air. In this work novel nanostructured materials with noble metal
nanoparticles deposited onto ceramics based supports have been investigated as
the catalysts for fuel cells, promising alternative power sources. Several
ceramic supports were prepared - Ti, Sn and W based oxides, doped by Ru or Nb
to improve conductivity. Physical chemical and electrochemical characterization
of these novel materials confirmed higher efficiency and long term stability to
decrease the costs and increase life time of fuel cells acceptable for
commercial application.