Efficient Ternary Synergism of Platinum/Tin Oxide/Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Leading to High-Performance Ethanol Oxidation

Direct ethanol fuel cells are attractive alternative power sources due to the use of liquid fuels featuring high energy density, low toxicity, easy storage, and biomass-derived production. To date, most Pt-based electrocatalysts are still limited by low mass activity and high susceptibility to poisoning for the ethanol oxidation reaction (EOR) in acidic medium. Herein, we have constructed a ternary platinum/tin oxide/nitrogen-doped carbon electrocatalyst for the EOR by highly dispersing the hybridized platinum/tin oxide on nitrogen-doped carbon nanocages. CO electrooxidation from the stripping experiments is used as a sensitive indicator to evaluate the antipoisoning capability of the catalysts. By a comparison study on a series of designed catalysts, the correlation of the CO resistibility with the geometrical configuration has been well established for the catalysts. We demonstrate that the efficient ternary synergism of Pt/SnOx/N-doped sp2-C via the heterointerfaces is the key to high CO resistibility,...