Enhancement in electrochemical catalytic activity of mesoporous RuO(x)H(y) and Pt/RuO(x)H(y) by gas treatment.

A well-crystallized mesoporous hydrous ruthenium dioxide (RuO(x)H(y)) with high surface area of 120 m(2) g(-1) and high electrochemical catalytic activity has been synthesized by a replicating route with the mesoporous silica (KIT-6) as hard template. The materials were characterized by means of thermo-gravimetric analysis (TG), X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and N(2) sorption. The electrocatalytic activity of the samples for methanol oxidation were investigated by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and linear scan voltammetry (LSV) techniques. A mixed gas of CO and O(2) was adopted to investigate the effect of gas treatment on the electrochemical activity of the samples. The results show that the electrocatalytic activity of the prepared mesoporous RuO(x)H(y) and 3 wt% Pt/mesoporous RuO(x)H(y) toward methanol oxidation was much enhanced after treatment with a mixed gas of CO and O(2). The enhanced electrochemical catalytic activity of the materials might be attributed to the structure activation during the gas treatment and the high surface area of RuO(x)H(y) matrix with mesoporous structure.