Honeycomb like copper‐cobalt nanostructures and their synergy with carbon supports for electrooxidation of carbinol

Summary Fabricating the significant electrocatalysts with enriched activity and stability is necessary due to the increasing demands of the fuel cell industries for its commercialization. This report provides a widespread impact on fabrication of a suitable and significant porous bimetallic nanocatalyst for methanol oxidation reaction (MOR). Here, we have developed nanofoams of Cu‐Co alloys/oxides with varied carbon supports using simple combustion method, where graphite oxide (GO) shows synergistic “catalyst‐support” effect than other substrates. The morphological studies reveal a honeycomb‐like structure with dense porous nature of Cu‐Co nanofoam (CuCo@rGO). X‐ray diffraction and spectroscopic studies reveal the formation of spinel structure of CuCo 2 O 4 with active {110} facets in case of CuCo@rGO, exhibiting higher methanol electrooxidation activity of 198 mA/cm 2 , which is found to be improved than that of the previous reports. The optimized composition, CuCo@rGO shows the slow decrease in the current in chronoamperometric studies with 40% retention of its activity even after 10 hours. The CoCu@rGO nanofoam shows improved Brunauer‐Emmett‐Teller surface area of ~50 m 2 /g due to the addition of GO. In addition, the composite shows an excellent electrochemical surface area value of 7.75 m 2 /g over other compositions of different carbon supports. The intrinsic effect of better conductivity of Co75Cu25@rGO has also been confirmed using impedance spectroscopy. The porous honeycomb structure of Co75Cu25@rGO composite synergistically impacts methanol oxidation and also forbids the formation of CO intermediate, maintaining the activity.