Titanium dioxide encapsulated in nitrogen-doped carbon enhances the activity and durability of platinum catalyst for Methanol electro-oxidation reaction

The development of advanced catalyst supports is a promising route to obtain active and durable electrocatalysts for methanol electro-oxidation reaction. In the current work, nitrogen-doped carbon encapsulated titanium dioxide composite (TiO 2 @NC X ) is constructed and serves as support material for the Pt catalyst. The TiO 2 @NC X support is fabricated by the procedure of an in-situ polymerization and subsequent pyrolysis. The synthesized Pt/TiO 2 @NC X catalysts show enhanced electrocatalytic performance towards methanol electro-oxidation compared with the commercial Pt/C catalyst. The enhancement can be ascribed to combinatory effect of N-doped carbon and TiO 2 , in which the tolerance to CO-poisoning and the intrinsic kinetics of methanol oxidation reaction are simultaneously improved by the bifunctional mechanism and the electronic effect. As a result, the as-developed TiO 2 @NC X composite is a promising catalyst support material for the application in fuel cell.