Copper (I) oxide nanocubes loaded with a low-content binary PtIr alloy enable enhanced methanol/ ethanol oxidation

The design of a catalyst plays a significant role in developing high-performance renewable energy materials. Among these, the catalyst engineering for the electrochemical oxidation of fuels at the anode of the fuel cells has drawn focus due to their broad impact on modern research. To this end, major challenges have been considered, including enhanced performance, a durable nature, and the low economic cost of the electrocatalyst material. Handling the mentioned goals, cubic-shaped copper (I) oxide (Cu 2 O) as catalyst support for the fabrication of low-content PtIr binary alloys has been used to synthesize a catalyst. Among the brief library of the synthesized catalysts series, Pt 2 Ir 1 /Cu 2 O NC has exhibited enhanced oxidation of methanol in a half-cell testing system with high current density (1443 mA/mg Pt ) and low onset oxidation potential (∼0.45 V vs RHE), thus outperforming commercial Pt/C and PtRu/C electrocatalysts. Additionally, this electrocatalyst exhibited a superior performance in ethanol oxidation reaction with high current density (2190 mA/mg Pt ), which also exceeded the respective value of the commercial Pt/C (657 mA/mg Pt ) and other catalysts investigated in this study. The exceptional performance is mainly ascribed to the structural and electronic effects joining strong metal-to-support interactions among the catalyst material, which are also successfully confirmed from materials characterizations. • Low-content PtIr alloys loaded on Copper (I) Oxide nanocubes by wet-chemical method. • The developed material applied as catalyst for methanol and ethanol oxidation reactions. • Strong metal-to-support interactions facilitated fast electron transfer in electrocatalysis. • Structural effects favoured the enhanced and durable activity outperforming Pt/C catalyst.