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Promoting the methanol oxidation catalytic activity by introducing surface nickel on platinum nanoparticles

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Abstract

High performance methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) catalysts are critical to the performance of attractive, direct methanol fuel cells. Here, we use surface controlled PtNi alloy nanoparticles as model catalysts to study the MOR mechanism and give further guidance to the design of new high performance MOR catalysts. The enhanced MOR activity of PtNi alloy was mainly attributed to the enhanced OH adsorption owing to surface Ni sites. This suggests that the MOR undergoes the Langmuir–Hinshelwood mechanism, whereby adsorbed CO is removed with the assistance of adsorbed OH. Within the PtNi catalyst, Pt provides methanol adsorption sites (in which methanol is converted to adsorbed CO) and Ni provides OH adsorption sites. The optimized Pt–Ni ratio for MOR was found to be 1:1. This suggests that bifunctional catalysts with both CO and OH adsorption sites can lead to highly active MOR catalysts.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2017YFA0206500), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21671014), State Key Laboratory of Organic–Inorganic Composites, Beijing University of Chemical Technology (No. oic-201503003) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. buctrc201522).

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  1. State Key Lab of Organic-Inorganic Composites, Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Soft Matter Science and Engineering, Beijing Key Lab of Energy Environmental Catalysis, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, 100029, China

    Siqi Lu, Huiming Li, Jingyao Sun & Zhongbin Zhuang

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  1. Siqi Lu
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  2. Huiming Li
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  3. Jingyao Sun
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  4. Zhongbin Zhuang
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Correspondence to Zhongbin Zhuang.

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Lu, S., Li, H., Sun, J. et al. Promoting the methanol oxidation catalytic activity by introducing surface nickel on platinum nanoparticles. Nano Res. 11, 2058–2068 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-017-1822-x

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