Facile construction of trimetallic PtAuRu nanostructures with highly porous features and perpendicular pore channels as enhanced formic acid catalysts

The design of high-performance electrocatalysts for the electrooxidation of liquid fuel is highly desirable for the commercial development of fuel cells. Engineering the nanocatalysts with high surface active areas has been regarded as one of the most efficient approach to obtain the high-performance electrocatalysts. For this reason, we herein demonstrated a facile ultrasonic-assisted synthetic method to successfully fabricate the trimetallic PtAuRu nanostructures with highly porous features and perpendicular pore channels. By virtue of the highly porous properties and abundant pore channels, the resulted PtAuRu nanocrystals (PtAuRu NCs) with the optimized atomic ratio exhibit extremely high electrocatalytic performances toward formic acid oxidation with the mass and specific activities of 1044.1 mA mg(-1) and 14.5 mA cm(-2), 4.1 and 2.2 times higher than those of commercial Pt/C, respectively. Our tremendous efforts in this work can not only provide a facile strategy for the preparation of excellent electrocatalysts but also greatly accelerate the commercial development of fuel cells and beyond.