High activity of novel nanoporous Pd–Au catalyst for methanol electro-oxidation in alkaline media

•Nanoporous PdAu catalyst can be fabricated by dealloying of AlPdAu ternary alloy.•Nanoporous PdAu catalyst exhibits enhanced activity for methanol electro-oxidation.•Alloying Au facilitates CO-like species oxidation and active Pd sites recovery.

Nanoporous PdAu catalyst (NP-PdAu) can be fabricated by chemical dealloying ternary AlPdAu alloy in the alkaline solution. Electrochemical measurements demonstrate that the NP-PdAu exhibits greatly enhanced catalytic activity and long-term stability toward methanol electro-oxidation. The as-revealed specific activity and mass activity can attain to 1.30 mA cm−2 and 866.50 mA mg−1 (Pd), respectively, which is significantly higher than that of monometallic NP-Pd, NP-Au and widely-reported Pd or Pd-based nanoparticle catalysts. Moreover, methanol oxidation reaction on the NP-PdAu electrode is diffusion-controlled and represents a good linear correlation with methanol concentration. The results indicate that NP-PdAu is attractive as a promising electrocatalyst of alkali-type direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs).