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Facile synthesis of carboxylated-graphene nanosheets supported PtRu catalysts and their electrocatalytic oxidation of methanol

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Abstract

In this paper, we prove an efficient and facile synthesis method for preparing PtRu nanoparticles (NPs)/graphene nanosheets (GNS) catalysts for methanol electrooxidation. Our approach employed carboxylated-graphene nanosheets (C-GNS) as the support which prepared by the Friedel-Crafts reaction between succinic anhydride and GNS. The reaction conditions are mild without cumbersome pretreatment of GNS. The morphology and component of PtRu NPs/C-GNS catalysts were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and inductively coupled plasma-atom emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES), respectively. The TEM observation reveals that PtRu NPs with an average diameter of ca. 4.0 ± 0.5 nm uniformly distributed on the edges and wrinkles of C-GNS. The further electrochemical characterizations including cyclic voltammograms (CV) and chronoamperometry (CA) methods show that PtRu NPs/C-GNS catalysts have significantly higher electrocatalytic activity and stability toward methanol electrooxidation compared to the PtRu catalysts supported on the unmodified GNS. This provides an easy approach to synthesize GNS-based electrode materials for high-performance energy conversion devices in the future.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by NSFC (21303134), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2013M532017) and Outstanding Youth Science Fund of **’an University of Science and Technology (2018YQ2-13).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, **’an University of Science & Technology, **’an, 710054, People’s Republic of China

    Bohua Wu, Changqing Wu, Jia** Zhu, Xue Li, Jia Chu, **aoqin Wang & Shanxin **ong

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  1. Bohua Wu
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  2. Changqing Wu
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  3. Jia** Zhu
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  4. Xue Li
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  5. Jia Chu
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  6. **aoqin Wang
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  7. Shanxin **ong
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Correspondence to Bohua Wu or Shanxin **ong.

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Wu, B., Wu, C., Zhu, J. et al. Facile synthesis of carboxylated-graphene nanosheets supported PtRu catalysts and their electrocatalytic oxidation of methanol. Ionics 26, 4599–4608 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11581-020-03608-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11581-020-03608-3

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