Methanol is used as a fuel in the direct methanol fuel cell. Direct oxidation of methanol encounters large overvoltages at most unmodified electrode surfaces. The development of new procedures for electrocatalytic oxidation of methanol to decrease this overvoltage is therefore very desirable. In this paper, we report a new zeolite-modified carbon paste electrode based on Ni-ZSM-5 for methanol electrooxidation. Nanocrystallites of ZSM-5 (Si/Al of 50) with average particle size of 58 nm were synthesized using clear solutions at low temperature (90 C) under atmospheric pressure. Ni(II) ions were incorporated into the zeolite by immersion of the modified carbon paste electrode with synthesized zeolite in a 1.0 M nickel chloride solution. Cyclic voltammetry showed that by using nano-sized zeolite, the oxidation current increased compared with that of micron-sized zeolite crystallites.
