Nanoporous bismuth electrocatalyst with high performance for glucose oxidation application

Abstract Although direct glucose fuel cell (DGFC) is widely regarded as one of the most promising energy systems, the low catalytic activity and inferior instability of most anode catalysts during electro-oxidation of glucose has greatly hampered its potential applications. In this work, an efficient and durable anode catalyst of nanoporous bismuth (Bi) for the alkaline electro-oxidation of glucose was proposed just by a simple de-alloying method. The microstructure and catalytic performance of nanoporous bismuth could be finely tuning through actively controlling the composition of precursor Mg–Bi alloy. A three-dimension structure was formed after de-alloying Mg–Bi precursor, giving rise to an increased specific surface area and correspondingly resulting in an enhanced electro-catalytic performance. It has intimated that the optimal nanoporous Bi catalyst with an open, bi-continuous interpenetrating pore-to-ligament structure was constructed based on Mg65Bi35 alloy etching and exhibited an enhanced current density (as high as 8.04 mA/cm2) during alkaline electro-oxidation of glucose, together with the lowest poisoning rate of 5.6 × 10−3%. The remarkable electrochemical performance of the nanoporous Bi catalyst, coupling with facile dealloying strategy may facilitate design and development of renewable energy device.