Synthesis of Well-Defined Pt-Based Catalysts for Methanol Oxidation Reaction Based on Electron–Hole Separation Effects

In this work, we develop a green and facile photoreduction strategy to fabricate Pt nanoparticles (NPs), which uniformly distributed on the graphitic carbon encapsulated titanium oxide nanorods (TNR@GC). The TNR@GC exhibits an enhanced electron–hole separation effect due to the existence of trivalent titanium and excellent electric conductivity arising from an ultrathin carbon layer (1.5 nm). The excited electron from TNR can rapidly migrate to the surface of the ultrathin carbon layer and thus reduce the Pt ion, forming well-defined Pt NPs on the carbon layer. The obtained p-Pt/TNR@GC catalyst shows impressive activity and stability for methanol electro-oxidation, exhibiting almost 3-times higher mass activity (1.12 A·mg –1 Pt) compared with Pt/C. Furthermore, this strategy can be extended to access a series of noble metal function materials, including Au, Ag, and Pd. This work opens a new prospect to prepare functional nanomaterials with environmentally friendly and energy savings.