Physical and electrochemical properties of Pt–Ru/C samples prepared on various carbon supports by using the barrel sputtering system

The present study investigated physical and electrochemical properties of carbon-supported Pt–Ru alloy (Pt–Ru/C) samples prepared on various carbon supports by using a sputtering system with barrel-type powder sample holder (the barrel sputtering system). For this system, the deposited Pt–Ru nano-particles had uniform sizes of less than 4 nm and homogeneous atomic ratios of Pt and Ru of ca. 50:50 at.% independent of a specific surface area of the carbon support. Further, the electrochemical properties of the prepared samples obtained from CO stripping voltammetry were almost identical. These were completely different from the result for wet process showing that the physical and electrochemical properties of samples prepared by an impregnation method changed with the specific surface area of the carbon support.