Facile construction of acid-resistant Au nanoclusters via hydrophobic carbon coating for catalyzing CO oxidation in acidic media

摘要

The oxidation of CO in acidic media is very important. For example, in direct methanol fuel cell, CO tends to poison the Pt electrode and cause a reduction of cell output power. CO can be removed by oxidation under the catalysis of Au nanoclusters with an optimal size of 2 nm. However, such small Au clusters tend to be corroded in the acidic media. Here we developed a facile method to solve this problem via hydrophobic carbon coating. The Au@C composite was prepared by reverse microemulsion-hydrothermal method. The hydrophobic carbon can effectively avoid the corrosion of gold nanoclusters by an acid environment while catalyzing CO oxidation efficiently.