Commercial Spirits for Surfactant-Free Syntheses of Electro-Active Platinum Nanoparticles

The Co4CatTM process is a simple, surfactant-free method to produce colloidal dispersions of precious metal nanoparticles in alkaline mono-alcohols. The synthesis is performed in lowboiling-point solvents and is relevant for industrial production. The robustness of the process is demonstrated by using three different commercial spirits as solvents to obtain Pt nanoparticles.

The results demonstrate that careful control of the solvent purity is not needed to achieve the synthesis of stable 2 nm platinum nanoparticle colloids readily active electrocatalysts for energy conversion reactions like the methanol oxidation.