Facile preparation of Pt-based cage-bell structured nanoarchitectures for enhanced methanol oxidation electrocatalysis

Abstract The porous Pt-based nanomaterials are highly desired for their superb methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) activity. In this work, an effective method was proposed to synthesize Pd@mesoporous PtAu cage-bell structured nanomaterials (Pd@mPtAu CBs). In the synthetic process, Pd@SiO2 nanoparticles and F127 were used as template and structure directing agent, respectively. The obtained Pd@mPtAu CBs are evenly distributed in size with highly porous surface and interconnected micro-structure. Significantly, the prepared Pd@mPtAu CBs exhibit outstanding catalytic activity and stability toward MOR, which is confirmed as a promising electrocatalyst of direct methanol fuel cells. Furthermore, the proposed method is also suitable for the preparation of other Pt-based nanomaterials with cage-bell architecture, such as Pd@mPt CBs.