Ultradispersed platinum nanoclusters on polydopamine-functionalized carbon nanotubes as an excellent catalyst for methanol oxidation reaction

摘要

The poor electrocatalytic activity towards methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) and the extremely rare reserves of platinum are considered as two of the most severe obstacles which hinder the commercialization of direct methanol fuel cells. In this work, Pt nanoclusters (similar to 1.81 nm), which are much smaller than Pt nanoparticles (similar to 3 nm) in commercial Pt/C, have been uniformly dispersed on polydopaminefunctionalized carbon nanotubes via a simple polyol method. These ultradispersed Pt nanoclusters feature large accessible active surface as well as high fraction of surface atoms with low coordination numbers, and therefore not only exhibit excellent mass activity and stability but also show improved specify activity and CO tolerance relative to Pt/C and Pt/CNT catalyst. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.