Facile synthesis of holey graphene-supported Pt catalysts for direct methanol electro-oxidation

A simple synthetic method was developed to produce holey graphene with in-plane nanopores by a fast thermal expansion of graphene oxide (GO) in air and further thermal reduction in N2 flow at 900 °C. The as-synthesized holey graphene nanosheets (HGN) shows meso-macroporous structure and higher surface area than chemically reduced graphene oxide (CRGO) by using hydrazine hydrate. The catalysts of HGN-900 supported Pt nanoparticles (Pt/HGN-900) were further prepared through in-situ chemical co-reduction and applied in the electro-oxidation of methanol. The electrocatalytic performance of catalysts was investigated by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and chronoamperometry (CA) analysis. The results indicate that the catalytic activity of Pt/HGN-10min-900 (377.5 mA mg−1pt) is bout 1.83 and 2.77 times higher than that of Pt/CRGO-900 (206.1 mA mg−1pt) and Pt/XC-72 (136.2 mA mg−1pt) catalysts in 0.5 mol L−1 H2SO4 and 1.0 mol L−1 CH3OH, and Pt/HGN-900 catalysts show higher stable current density compared to that of Pt/XC-72 and Pt/CRGO-900 catalysts.