Facile synthesis of AgPt nano-pompons for efficient methanol oxidation: Morphology control and DFT study on stability enhancement

Facile synthesis of more dendritic and uniform Pt-based nanostructures with carbon materials could greatly reduce cost and increase Pt utilization for methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) in direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC). This study reports a novel one-pot method to fabricate AgPt nano-pompons (AgPt NPs) with the guidance of N-GQDs through AA reduce the precursor of Ag and Pt. Morphology characterization describes N-GQDs as morphology guiding and dispersing agents to regulate the dendrite formation of nano-pompons. Under the optimized conditions, the AgPt NPs (Ag1Pt2) display above 11 times improvement in electrocatalytic activity and higher stability for the MOR compared with Pt/C catalysts. Density function theory (DFT) studies prove that the introduction of Ag can greatly enhance the adsorption of CO on Pt and promote the transformation of CO to COOH. The facile synthetic method and excellent MOR performance endow AgPt NPs with great application prospect in DMFCs as an anode catalyst.