Veera Sadhu1, Esaam Jamil2, Selmiye Alkan Gürsel1,2 1Nanotechnology Research and Application Center, Sabanci University, 34956 Istanbul, Turkey 2Faculty of Natural Science and Engineering, Sabanci University, 34956 Istanbul, Turkey sadhu@sabanciuniv.edu  Nanomaterials based on graphene are highly important because of their unique properties for example high contact surface area, high electrical conductivity and their enormous stability. Graphene and graphene related materials have been used as promising catalyst supports in energy conversion and storage applications. However, in order to produce more efficient catalyst supports, in our research we successfully modify graphene with various active functional groups for example amine, thiophene, fluorosilane, and RGD peptide mono and multifunctionalization of graphene oxide. Then, these modified graphene has been used as efficient supports for Platinum (Pt) catalyst nanoparticles. The dispersion of Pt deposited on modified graphene has been enhanced and stable optimized dispersions were obtained in organic solvents. The cyclic voltametry (CV) results of Pt on mono functional graphene showed a high electrochemical surface area (ECSA) of 147 m2/g for Pt/GO-RGD compared to Pt/carbon black (Pt/C, 80 m2/gPt) and Pt/GO (99 m2/gPt). The efficiency of multifunctional graphene oxide will also be discussed in details. These modified graphene nanomaterials will be used in proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) electrodes and their efficiency will be evaluated in details by means of fuel cell performance. Veera Sadhu is currently Marie-Curie senior researcher at the Nanotechnology Research and Applications Center, Sabanci University, Turkey. He is primarily developing graphene based nanomaterials for various applications, which includes fuel cells and batteries. He received his PhD from Technical University of Dresden, Germany, in Polymer Chemistry. After finishing his PhD he has been working in various interdisciplinary scientific areas including, surface chemistry, softlithography, nanofabrication, nanopatterning, self-assembled monolayers, sensors, solar cells, organic LEDs, regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, fuel cells and batteries. He has published his scientific findings in international high impact journals and his author™s h-index is 9. |
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