Facile preparation of nanoporous platinum and its high electrocatalytic performances

Nanoporous platinum was fabricated by a simple dealloying method. Electron microscope characterizations show that selectively etching Al from PtAl alloy precursors in alkali or acid solution can both easily prepare three-dimensional bicontinuous network nanostructures of Pt. The resulted nanostructure exhibited much enhanced catalytic performance towards methanol electrooxidation compared with commercial Pt/C catalyst. More importantly, CO stripping and potentiostatic tests demonstrated that nanoporous Pt has much higher long-term catalytic stability and CO resistance than the Pt/C catalyst.