Ethanol Electro-Oxidation On Carbon-Supported Pt-Mo Electrocatalyst: A Study By Pinhole On-Line Differential Electrochemical Mass Spectrometry

Recently, researchers of the Center for Advanced Technology Research and Development at Kim Il Sung University have synthesized Pt-Mo/C electrocatalyst and studied the electrocatalytic mechanism of the EOR on carbon supported Pt-Mo alloy catalysts by electrochemical mass spectrometry.

PtMo-2/C electrocatalyst was synthesized by the formic acid reduction method following heat-treatment with H₂PtCl₆•6H₂O and (NH₄)₆Mo₇O₂₄•4H₂O as precursor salts.

Figure. Study on the electrocatalytic mechanism of the EOR by electrochemical mass spectrometry

The potentiodynamic study showed that the PtMo-2/C catalyst has the higher CO₂ current efficiency (8.8 %) than the Pt/C (6.9 %) during the EOR. The potentiostatic results of the EOR revealed higher kinetics in the potential range from 0.6 V to 0.8 V (vs. RHE) on the Pt/C compared with PtMo-2/C because of the faster dehydrogenation of ethanol on the Pt/C with higher content of Pt. DEMS results exhibited that the CCE (9.8 %) for PtMo-2/C is higher than that (7.7 %) for Pt/C after calibration of the m/z = 44 mass signal, which suggested the addition of Mo not only enhances the oxidation of CO to CO₂ by offering more OH species due to the bifunctional mechanism, but also reduces the coverage of CO_ads on the Pt surface due to the decreasing of Pt-CO binding energy, producing more catalytically active sites and more CO₂ for ethanol electrooxidation.

The results were published in the journal "Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics" (2025, Vol. 27, pp 16030–16038) under the title of "Ethanol electro-oxidation on carbon-supported Pt-Mo electrocatalyst: A study by pinhole on-line differential electrochemical mass spectrometry"(https://doi.org/10.1039/d5cp01253h).