N-doped graphene supported PtAu/Pt intermetallic core/dendritic shell nanocrystals for efficient electrocatalytic oxidation of formic acid

Although explosive investigations on boosting the practical large-scale commercialization of fuel cells have been carried out, the research on pursuing electrocatalysts with less cost, high activity, long lifetime remains a formidable challenge. Inspired by this, we herein demonstrate a facile wet-chemical route to create a novel class of N-doped graphene supported PtAu/Pt intermetallic core/dendritic shell nanocrystals for the first time. The resulted Pt1Au1/NG with intermetallic core and dendritic Pt shell combine both of the alloy and core-shell effects to expose more surface active areas and high-index facet, which exhibit excellent mass and specific activities (1847.1 mA mg(-1) and 14.95 mA cm(-2)) towards formic acid oxidation reaction. More importantly, such Pt1Au1/NG nanocatalyst can endure 500 cycles with little activity decay, displaying a newly-generated N-doped graphene supported Pt-based nanocatalysts with enhanced performance for fuel cells and beyond.