Ultrathin Vein‐Like Iridium–Tin Nanowires with Abundant Oxidized Tin as High‐Performance Ethanol Oxidation Electrocatalysts

Iridium (Ir) holds great promise for ethanol oxidation reaction (EOR), while its practical applications suffer from the limited shape‐controlled synthesis due to its low‐energy barrier for nucleation. To overcome this limitation, the preparation of a new class of ultrathin vein‐like Ir–tin nanowires (IrSn NWs) with abundant oxidized Sn is reported. By tuning the ratio of Ir to Sn, the optimized Ir67Sn33/C exhibits the highest mass density of 95.6 mA mg−1 Ir for EOR at low potential (0.04 V), which is 4.1‐fold and 20‐fold higher than that of Ir/C and the commercial Pt/C, respectively. It also exhibits the smallest Tafel slope of 153 mV dec−1 and superior stability after 2 h chronoamperometric measurement. Electrochemical measurements and X‐ray photoelectron spectra results confirm that the abundant oxidized Sn promotes a complete oxidization of ethanol into CO2 at low potential. This work highlights the importance of non‐noble metal on enhancing the EOR performance.