Electrodeposition fabrication of pore-arrayed hydrogen tungsten bronze as support of platinum nanoparticles for electrocatalytic oxidation of methanol oxidation

Abstract

Pore-arrayed hydrogen tungsten bronze (p-HxWO3) is fabricated with polystyrene as template by electrodeposition and used as the support of platinum nanoparticles as electrocatalyst (Pt/p-HxWO3) for methanol oxidation. The surface morphology, structure, and compositions of p-HxWO3 and Pt/p-HxWO3 are characterized with scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The activity and stability of Pt/p-HxWO3 toward methanol oxidation are evaluated in 0.5M H2SO4+1.0M CH3OH solution by cyclic voltammetry (CV), chronoamperometry (CA), and chronopotentiometry (CP), and cell discharge test. The characterizations from SEM, XRD, TEM, and FTIR demonstrate that p-HxWO3 contains uniform pores of about 200nm and the platinum particles can be uniformly distributed with an average size of 3.01nm on it. The electrochemical evaluations indicate that Pt/p-HxWO3 exhibits better activity and stability toward methanol oxidation than the platinum supported by non-pore arrayed HxWO3.