Palladium/nickel bifunctional electrocatalyst for hydrogen oxidation reaction in alkaline membrane fuel cell Maria Alesker c, 1 , Miles Page a, 1 , Meital Shviro c , Yair Paska a , Gregory Gershinsky c , Dario R. Dekel b , David Zitoun c, * a CellEra, Caesarea Business and Industrial Park, North Park, PO Box 3173, Caesarea, 30889, Israel b The Wolfson Department of Chemical Engineering, Nancy & Stephan Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP), Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel c Bar Ilan University, Department of Chemistry, Bar Ilan Institute of Technology and Advanced Materials (BINA), Ramat Gan, 52900, Israel highlights graphical abstract  Best reported power in AMFCs for non-Pt catalyst (anode and cathode).  Detailed structural characterization (HRTEM and EDS mapping).  Electrochemical measurements in RDE and AMFCs to propose a mechanism. article info Article history: Received 23 June 2015 Received in revised form 29 October 2015 Accepted 5 November 2015 Available online xxx Keywords: Alkaline Fuel cells Hydrogen oxidation reaction Nanoparticles AMFC HOR abstract Investigation of the hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR) in alkaline media has been pursued in the past few years side by side with the development of alkaline membrane fuel cells (AMFCs), also called anion exchange membrane fuel cells (AEM-FCs). In this communication, we present the synthesis, electro- chemistry and AMFC test of a platinum-free HOR catalyst. The anode catalyst is prepared by growing palladium nanoparticles onto nanoparticles of an oxophilic metal (nickel), resulting in nano-dispersed, interconnected crystalline phases of Ni and Pd. When used in the anode of a hydrogen/air AMFC, such Pd/Ni catalyst exhibits high HOR activity, resulting in record high performance for a platinum-free AMFC (0.4 A cm 2 at 0.6 V vs RHE). The enhancement of HOR catalytic activity vs. that observed at Pd (or Ni) alone is revealed directly in rotating disc electrode tests of this Pd/Ni catalyst that shows a significant negative shift (200 mV) of the onset potential for the HOR current vs. the case of Pd. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Alkaline membrane fuel cell (AMFC) technology has received significant interest in recent years, because it has the potential of overcoming cost barriers of polymer electrolyte fuel cells [1], as the basic environment of the anion exchange membranes allows the use of less expensive electrocatalysts and low-cost metal hardware [2]. While research on oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) catalysts in alkaline medium has been ongoing for many years [3,4], studies on hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR) catalysts for AMFCs constitute a practically new field of investigation. In contrast with the very fast kinetics of the HOR on Pt catalysts in proton exchange membrane * Corresponding author. E-mail address: david.zitoun@biu.ac.il (D. Zitoun). 1 These authors contributed equally to the research. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Power Sources journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jpowsour http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpowsour.2015.11.026 0378-7753/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Journal of Power Sources 304 (2016) 332e339