Carbon nanomaterials doped with heteroatoms, in particular, nitrogen atoms, are of great interest for electrochemical power engineering as nonmetallic catalysts or carriers of catalytically active metal nanoparticles. A nanostructured, reduced graphene oxide modified with nitrogen in a gas discharge plasma in a vacuum chamber of a magnetron-ion sputtering facility is considered. It is shown that plasma treatment of reduced graphene oxide does not cause undesirable morphological changes in the structure of carbon nanomaterial, but it leads to the incorporation of nitrogen atoms into the structure of reduced graphene oxide with the formation of pyridine-, pyrrole-, and graphite-like configurations. The application of pulsed negative bias voltages of various magnitudes to the substrate with the sample increases the concentration of nitrogen atoms to 2.6 at % and also promotes an increase in the proportion of nitrogen atoms in the pyridine form and a slight decrease in the proportion of atoms in the pyrrole form. The results allow for considering the obtained carbon nanomaterials for use as components of electrochemical devices, for example, fuel cells, in the future.

Reduced graphene oxide (rGO) with a specific surface area of ~600 m2/g has been synthesized and characterized. A series of membrane-electrode assemblies has been fabricated and tested as an element of a fuel cell. In the fabrication of these assemblies, rGO (0–10% of the weight of the Pt/Vulcan XC-72 electrocatalyst) was added to the electrocatalytic composition. The optimum rGO concentration in the active layer of a fuel cell is 5 wt %. At this rGO concentration, the specific power of the fuel cell is at least 20% higher than in the case of the rGO-free electrocatalytic layers.

Reduced graphene oxide (RGO) with specific surface area of ca. 600 m(2)/g was synthesized and characterized. A series of membrane-electrode assemblies with RGO addition (in amount from 0 to 6 wt%) to electrocatalytic composition based on 40 wt% of Pt on Vulcan XC-72 were fabricated and tested. Pt/Vulcan XC-72 was synthesized using magnetron-ion sputtering in an impulse mode. It was shown that the optimum content of RGO in the fuel cell active layer is ca. 1 wt%. In particular, at this RGO concentration the maximum fuel cell power density is increased by ca. 8.5% in comparison with no-RGO containing electrocatalytic layers. Copyright (C) 2015, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.