Fabrication of Nanoporous Copper Electrodes for Electrocatalytic Oxidation of Methanol

Nanoporous copper film (NPCF) electrode was fabricated by applying multicyclic potential scans on a polished copper electrode in an electrolyte composed of ZnCl2 and benzyl alcohol. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), Cyclic voltammetry (CV) and chronoamperometric (CA) were employed to characterize copper chloride modified copper electrode. The Eonset on the copper chloride modified nanoporous copper electrode was 0.5038 V, which was 46 mV lower than that on copper chloride modified copper electrode; Epeak on the copper chloride modified nanoporous copper electrode was 0.9072 V, 814 mV lower than copper chloride modified copper electrode; the jpeak was 15.4 mA cm-2 higher than that on copper chloride modified copper electrode (9.8 mA cm-2) in 0.1 NaOH solution in the range of 0 to 1.25 V( vs.Ag/AgCl) at a scan rate of 10mVs-1.