Modification of commercial Pt/C catalyst by cobalt for enhanced electro-oxidation of ethanol

An easy and efficient method was considered to enhance the activity of Pt/C catalyst for ethanol oxidation by formation of a platinum-cobalt alloy via electrodeposition technique. The morphology and structural properties of the prepared Pt-Co/C alloy catalyst were determined by SEM, EDX and XRD. The XRD curves confirmed Pt characteristic peaks at around 2θ = 39.76° (111) and 46.23° (200) while the existence of Co was not clear at 2θ = 44.5° and 51.85° owing to its alloying with Pt. CV, CA, EIS techniques were employed to examine the electrochemical behavior of the Pt-Co/C catalyst. The impedance data were fitted to the Randles circuit to obtain the parameters for a single faradic reaction coupled with mass transfer. The Pt-Co/C catalyst showed better performance in terms of the onset potential and current density. The sample containing Pt-Co/C catalyst exhibited about 2 times more current density than the commercial Pt/C catalyst.