PhD scholarship in Chemical Production of Graphene Catalysts for Electrochemical Energy Conversion

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label Burse autorenew 2025-09-29, 17:01 history_edu Silviu Marinescu
A 3-year PhD scholarship is available from the 1 January 2014 at NanoChemistry group, Department of Chemistry at Technical University of Denmark.

Responsibilities and tasks
The PhD project aims at development of graphene catalysts with high activity at low cost, and to pursue their application as electrocatalysts in fuel cells. Platinum (Pt) is presently one of the most efficient fuel cell catalysts. However, the price of Pt has tripled over the last 10 years. Development of new catalysts with low Pt loading and possibility of recycling used catalysts in order to recover Pt is therefore imperative. This PhD project attempts to develop chemical synthesis procedures to produce graphene supported catalysts for electrochemical energy conversion, with high activity, at low cost and suitable for recycling.



The project will combine graphene with advanced nanocatalysts via chemical synthesis. Shape- and size-controlled catalysts such as nanosheets and core-shell metallic nanostructures will be synthesized with the expensive element Platinum (Pt) placed on the surface of composite nanostructures to exert the catalytic function.

The project includes development of a series of chemical synthesis procedures, thorough studies of relationships among structure, properties, and function at the nanoscale, and systematic tests of the catalysts in fuel cell systems. The project will provide knowledge of new catalytic systems using minimum amounts of Pt for large production of low-cost catalysts to reduce the total cost of the fuel cells.