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Trimetallic Platinum-Ruthenium-Copper Nanotubes for Methanol Oxidation
Anisotropic nanostructures can increase the electrochemical activity while maintaining the stability of catalysts. Additionally, nanomaterials possess tunable surface area, morphologies, and surface facets that enable the formation of a catalyst with enhanced electrocatalytic activity.5,6 We have demonstrated that the platinum-copper nanodendrites can enhance the MOR activity and maintain the dendritic morphology of the nanostructures.7
In this work, we synthesize binary and ternary metallic nanotubes and study their activity for MOR. Bimetallic nanostructures are formed first by alloying platinum precursor salts with copper nanowires through the galvanic replacement and co-reduction mechanisms. This process forms hollow platinum-copper nanotubes with controllable surface roughness. To further improve the activity for MOR, we alloy ruthenium into platinum-copper nanostructures. The morphology, surface roughness, and composition of these ruthenium-platinum-copper nanotubes can be synthetically tuned by controlling the precursor ratio, reaction time, and reaction temperature. The electrochemical activity for MOR will be evaluated by cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry to characterize the electrochemical surface area, the efficiency for MOR, the tolerance for CO, and the stability of the electrocatalysts in acidic media. The enhanced activity of these multimetallic nanostructures as supportless electrocatalysts for MOR will be discussed.
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