Pt-Ru/polyaniline/carbon nanotube composites with three-layer tubular structure for efficient methanol oxidation

Developing anode catalyst with highly active and CO tolerance of direct methanol fuel cells is of prime importance. In this work, the polyaniline/carbon nanotube composites were fabricated via in situ electro-chemical method. The Pt-Ru alloy nanoclusters were well-distributed on polyaniline/carbon nanotubes supporting materials by co-electrodeposition method. SEM, HRTEM and XPS were employed to investigate the surface features of composites. The results indicated that Pt-Ru/polyaniline/carbon nanotubes composites were formed three-layer tubular structure. The Pt9.8Ru1/polyaniline/carbon nanotubes catalyst displayed good performance along with the lower peak potential of forward-scanning methanol oxidation, longer-term stability and higher current density compared to Pt/C, Pt-Ru/carbon nanotube composites and other Pt-Ru/polyaniline/carbon nanotube composites. The current density of the Pt9.8Ru1/PANI/CNTs catalyst for methanol oxidation was 8.9 folds higher than that for Pt/C and 2.4 folds higher for Pt9.8Ru1/CNTs catalyst, which indicated that this catalyst had a high number of active sites and surface Ru sites could effectively facilitate the removal of COad. Our data showed that the prepared Pt-Ru/polyaniline/carbon nanotubes composites are potential candidate as bimetallic electro-catalysts for methanol oxidation reaction. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.