Dealloyed porous gold anchored by in situ generated graphene sheets as high activity catalyst for methanol electro-oxidation reaction

Hui Xu; Shuai Liu; Xiaoliang Pu; Kechang Shen; Laichang Zhang; Xiaoguang Wang; Jingyu Qin; Weimin Wang

doi:10.1039/c9ra09821f

Dealloyed porous gold anchored by in situ generated graphene sheets as high activity catalyst for methanol electro-oxidation reaction

RSC Adv. 2020 Jan 9;10(3):1666-1678. doi: 10.1039/c9ra09821f. eCollection 2020 Jan 7.

Authors

Hui Xu^{1

2}, Shuai Liu², Xiaoliang Pu², Kechang Shen³, Laichang Zhang⁴, Xiaoguang Wang⁵, Jingyu Qin², Weimin Wang²

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory for Modification of Chemical Fibers and Polymer Materials, International Joint Laboratory for Advanced Fiber and Low-dimension Materials, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Donghua University Shanghai 201620 China xuhui199278@dhu.edu.cn.
² Key Laboratory for Liquid-Solid Structural Evolution and Processing of Materials, Ministry of Education, Shandong University Jinan 250061 China weiminw@sdu.edu.cn.
³ Ulsan Ship and Ocean College, Ludong University Yantai 264025 China.
⁴ School of Engineering, Edith Cowan University 270 Joondalup Drive, Joondalup Perth WA6027 Australia.
⁵ Laboratory of Adv. Mater. & Energy Electrochemistry, Taiyuan University of Technology Taiyuan 030024 China.

Abstract

A novel one-step method to prepare the nanocomposites of reduced graphene oxide (RGO)/nanoporous gold (NPG) is realized by chemically dealloying an Al₂Au precursor. The RGO nanosheets anchored on the surface of NPG have a cicada wing like shape and act as both conductive agent and buffer layer to improve the catalytic ability of NPG for methanol electro-oxidation reaction (MOR). This improvement can also be ascribed to the microstructure change of NPG in dealloying with RGO. This work inspires a facile and economic method to prepare the NPG based catalyst for MOR.