Exploring the role of nickel in the formation of amorphous Pt-based metallic alloys for methanol electro-oxidation with significant enhancement

•Amorphous PtNiP ternary nanocomposite was synthesized by hypophospite-assisted reduction.•Nickel salt played a key role in the formation of amorphous structure for PtNiP.•PtNiP showed excellent electrocatalytic activity and long-term stability for MOR in alkaline.•XPS was used to analyze the superior electrochemical performance of PtNiP.

Amorphous PtNiP ternary nanoparticles were successfully synthesized via a hypophospite-assisted reduction process for methanol electro-oxidation. Due to the difficulty of P doping into pure Pt, it was found that improving the reaction temperature led to the phase transformation of Pt-P binary alloys from amorphous to crystalline by the same hypophospite-assisted reduction method. Adding a small quantity of nickel salt in the Pt-P synthetic solution could promote the P content by the formation of NiP matrixes, leading to the PtNiP ternary nanoparticles with amorphous structure. Notably, amorphous PtNiP ternary nanoparticles showed high electrochemical activity and long-term stability for methanol oxidation, which was explained by XPS analysis.

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