Ammonia Mediated One-Step Synthesis of Three-Dimensional Porous Pt x Cu 100– x Nanochain Networks with Enhanced Electrocatalytic Activity toward Polyhydric Alcohol Oxidation

Owing to the excellent molecular accessibility and self-supported architectures, three-dimensional (3D) porous nanostructures can promote the catalytic property of Pt-based catalysts. In this work, by using ammonia as the structure-director in the synthetic process, a facile method was developed to synthesize bimetallic 3D porous Pt x Cu 100– x nanochain networks (3D p-Pt x Cu 100– x NCNs) with tunable compositions. The 3D p-Pt 46 Cu 54 NCNs achieve a mass activity of 8.38 A mg Pt –1 for ethylene glycol oxidation reaction (EGOR) and 4.01 A mg Pt –1 for glycerol oxidation reaction (GOR) in alkaline solution, which is 3.58-fold and 4.01-fold that of commercial Pt/C, respectively. The result demonstrated that the bimetallic 3D nanochain network structures facilitated the effective utilization of Pt. The ammonia mediated one-step synthetic strategy has the potential to prepare other promising 3D porous Pt-based nanomaterials in electrocatalytic applications.