Worm-Shape Pt Nanocrystals Grown on Nitrogen-Doped Low-Defect Graphene Sheets: Highly Efficient Electrocatalysts for Methanol Oxidation Reaction.

Abstract

Although direct methanol fuel cell offers high energy use efficiency and low pollution emission, the lack of suitable electrode materials poses a great challenge to its commercial application. Herein, a facile and scalable approach is developed to fabricate a hybrid electrocatalyst consisting of strongly coupled worm-shape Pt nanocrystals and nitrogen-doped low-defect graphene (N-LDG) sheets. Interestingly, it is found that the formation of Pt nanoworms (NWs) is induced by the N atoms in the high-quality carbon matrix, which also allows the integration of their respective structural advantages and leads to a strong synergetic coupling effect. As a result, the obtained Pt NW/N-LDG catalyst exhibits an extremely high mass activity of 1283.1 mA mg-1 toward methanol oxidation reaction, accompanied by reliable long-term stability and good antipoisoning ability, which are dramatically enhanced as compared with conventional Pt nanoparticle catalysts dispersed on undoped LDG, reduced graphene oxide, and commercial carbon black supports.