Low-temperature plasma modified Vulcan XC72R as a support to enhance the methanol oxidation performance of Pt nanoparticles

Vulcan XC72R as a kind of carbon material is widely used as a support to deposit metal catalysts. However, its low pore size, the difficulty of dispersion, and the rare sites have limited its application. In this work, we modified the surface of Vulcan XC72R by low-temperature plasma. It is detected that its original morphology and structure have been greatly changed by longtime plasma irradiation. The pore size increased and the specific surface area decreased with the increasing treatment time, while the pore volume initially increased and then decreased. Meanwhile, the outside surfaces of Vulcan XC72R were exfoliated to ultra-thin nanosheets and grafted with the oxygen-containing functional groups. Compared with the untreated Vulcan XC72R, Pt nanoparticles supported on treated Vulcan XC72R with smaller size exhibited higher catalyst activity and longer cyclic stability for the methanol oxidation reaction. This study demonstrates that plasma is an efficient approach to tuning the pore size and functionalizing the surface of Vulcan XC72R.