ABSTRACT Platinum (Pt)‐based materials are the state‐of‐the‐art catalysts for the methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) and the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), yet their industrial application is hindered by limited activity and stability, which necessitates the development of effective strategies to address the activity‐stability challenge. Alloying platinum with copper can effectively regulate the electronic states of active sites via synergistic and strain effects, thereby improving the electrocatalytic performance, while morphology controlling remains the intrinsic limitation. In this study, by using nicotinamide as the morphology controller, the Pt–Cu alloy nanoparticles were designed via a nicotinamide‐mediated self‐assembly strategy to fabricate one‐dimensional (1D) nanowires (NWs). Benefiting from the morphology display and electronic structure regulation induced by the alloying effect, the as‐prepared Pt 1 Cu 1 NWs are endowed with sufficient active site accessibility, high atom utilization, and excellent robustness, thereby boosting their electrocatalytic performance. Consequently, Pt 1 Cu 1 NWs exhibit excellent HER performance with a low overpotential (8 mV at 10 mA cm −2 ), and long‐term stability in 0.5 M H 2 SO 4 . Furthermore, Pt 1 Cu 1 NWs also present superior MOR activity with a high peak current density of 564 mA mg Pt −1 in 0.5 M H 2 SO 4 + 1 M CH 3 OH, outperforming commercial Pt black. This work provides an innovative strategy for the design of high‐efficiency Pt–Cu alloy catalysts toward highly effective HER and MOR.
Ye et al. (Sun,) studied this question.