Wire-like Pt on mesoporous Ti0.7W0.3O2 Nanomaterial with Compelling Electro-Activity for Effective Alcohol Electro-Oxidation

Abstract

Finding out robust active and sustainable catalyst towards alcohol electro-oxidation reaction is major challenges for large-scale commercialization of direct alcohol fuel cells. Herein, a robust Pt nanowires (NWs)/Ti0.7W0.3O2 electrocatalyst, as the coherency of using non-carbon catalyst support and controlling the morphology and structure of the Pt nanocatalyst, was fabricated via an effortless chemical reduction reaction approach at room temperature without using surfactant/stabilizers or template to assemble an anodic electrocatalyst towards methanol electro-oxidation reaction (MOR) and ethanol electro-oxidation reaction (EOR). These observational results demonstrated that the Pt NWs/Ti0.7W0.3O2 electrocatalyst is an intriguing anodic electrocatalyst, which can alter the state-of-the-art Pt NPs/C catalyst. Compared with the conventional Pt NPs/C electrocatalyst, the Pt NWs/Ti0.7W0.3O2 electrocatalyst exhibited the lower onset potential (~0.1\u2009V for MOR and ~0.2 for EOR), higher mass activity (~355.29\u2009mA/mgPt for MOR and ~325.01\u2009mA/mgPt for EOR) and much greater durability. The outperformance of the Pt NWs/Ti0.7W0.3O2 electrocatalyst is ascribable to the merits of the anisotropic one-dimensional Pt nanostructure and the mesoporous Ti0.7W0.3O2 support along with the synergistic effects between the Ti0.7W0.3O2 support and the Pt nanocatalyst. Furthermore, this approach may provide a promising catalytic platform for fuel cell technology and a variety of applications.