Uniform Au@Pt core–shell nanodendrites supported on molybdenum disulfide nanosheets for the methanol oxidation reaction

Abstract

Herein, we presented a facile seeded growth method to prepare high-quality three-dimensional (3D) Au@Pt bimetallic nanodendrite-decorated molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) nanosheets (Au@Pt/MoS₂). Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and high-resolution TEM exhibited that Au@Pt core–shell nanostructures were dispersed onto the surface of MoS₂ nanosheets. More importantly, the thickness of the Pt shell of the Au@Pt bimetallic nanodendrites on the surface of the MoS₂ nanosheets could be easily tuned via simply changing the synthesis parameters, such as the concentration of H₂PtCl₆, reaction time and temperature, which greatly influence the catalytic ability of Au@Pt/MoS₂ nanohybrids. Both cyclic voltammetry (CV) and chronoamperometry (CA) demonstrated that the as-prepared Au@Pt/MoS₂ nanohybrids possessed much higher electrocatalytic activity and stability than Pt/MoS₂ or commercial Pt/C catalyst. The peak current mass density of the selected Au@Pt/MoS₂ was 6.24 A mg⁻¹, which was 3389 and 20.3 times those of Pt/C (0.00184 A mg⁻¹) and Pt/MoS₂ (0.307 A mg⁻¹), respectively. The presented method may be a facile approach for the synthesis of MoS₂-supported bimetallic nanocomposites, which is significant for the development of high performance MoS₂-based sensors and catalysts.