Porous dendritic platinum nanotubes with extremely high activity and stability for oxygen reduction reaction

Abstract

Controlling the morphology of Pt nanostructures can provide opportunities to greatly increase their activity and stability. Porous dendritic Pt nanotubes were successfully synthesized by a facile, cost-effective aqueous solution method at room temperature in large scale. These unique structures are porous, hollow, hierarchical, and single crystalline, which not only gives them a large surface area with high catalyst utilization, but also improves mass transport and gas diffusion. These novel Pt structures exhibited significantly improved catalytic activity (4.4 fold) for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and greatly enhanced durability (6.1 fold) over that of the state-of-the-art commercial Pt/C catalyst. This work provides a promising approach to the design of highly efficient next-generation electrocatalysts.