Advanced architecture carbon with in-situ embedded ultrafine titanium dioxide as outstanding support material for platinum catalysts towards methanol electrooxidation

Here we report a novel Pt catalysts support material, i.e. the resorcinol-formaldehyde (RF) resin derived carbon embedded titanium dioxide (TiO2@RFC) with well-tuned pore structure and excellent electrical conductivity. The material is synthesized by in-situ polymerization of RF gel with porous texture at the presence of TiO2, followed by high temperature pyrolysis. The Pt nanoparticles (NPs) are deposited on the composites carbon material to form the methanol electrooxidation catalysts in direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs). The optimized Pt/TiO2@RFC catalyst possesses a comparably high electrochemical active surface area of 71.6 m2 g−1 (68.3 m2 g−1 for commercial Pt/C), attributed to its smaller Pt NPs size (2.62 nm) than the commercial Pt/C (2.84 nm). The maximum current densities during methanol electrooxidation reaction (MOR) for the optimized Pt/TiO2@RFC (822.2 mA mg−1) is 1.4 times higher than commercial Pt/C (344.4 mA mg−1). Remarkably, after accelerated degradation test through 2000 cyclic voltammetry, the mass activity for Pt/TiO2@RFC was well maintained at 689.5 mA mg−1, 3.3 times that of the commercial Pt/C (206.1 mA mg−1, decline of 40.17%). The sustainable electro-catalytic stability of Pt/TiO2@RFC for MOR may be ascribed to the unique structure and composition of the supported material, which provides a strong metal-support interaction and significantly suppresses the degradation processes in the long-term cyclic measurements.