Exceptional ethylene glycol electrooxidation activity enabled by sub-16 nm dendritic Pt–Cu nanocrystals catalysts

The catalysts for the electrooxidation of liquid fuel in the anodic electrode has severely limited the practical large-scale commercial application of fuel cells, and hence needs to be optimized. Herein, we report a facile one-pot method to successfully synthesize the sub-16 nm dendritic Pt–Cu nanocrystals (PtCu NCs) catalysts under the assistance of ultrasonic. In virtue of such dendritic structure, the alloy and electronic effects between Pt and Cu, such binary PtCu nanodendrites exhibited extremely high electrocatalytic performances towards ethylene glycol (EG) electrooxidation with the mass activity of 4259.2 mA mg−1, 4.5 times higher than that of the commercial Pt/C. Moreover, the Pt1Cu1 nanocatalysts can endure at least 500 cycles with less activity decay, demonstrating a new class of Pt-based electrocatalysts with enhanced performance for fuel cells and beyond.