Study of CO Oxidation on Well-Characterized Pt-Ru/C Electrocatalysts Having Different Composition

Abstract

In this paper, we characterized bimetallic Pt-Ru/C alloy catalysts having four different compositions and compared the catalytic activities of the prepared alloys for CO oxidation. ICP-AES, EDS, XRD, TEM, and XAS were used to investigate the composition, degree of alloying, particle size, and electronic structure of the prepared Pt-Ru/C catalysts. Those results indicated the synthesis of the alloy catalysts with intended composition and uniform size. The electrochemical study of the characterized alloys showed higher catalytic activity for CO oxidation than that of the commercial Pt/C (E-TEK, Inc., 20 wt %) catalyst. Especially, it was shown that the alloy catalyst with Ru composition of 50 atomic % gave the highest catalytic activity for CO oxidation.