Abstract
Platinum and platinum-based materials are desirable catalysts for a plethora of
applications due to platinum’s high catalytic performance and stability. However,
platinum’s industrial use is limited due to the availability of platinum resources and the
economic cost of obtaining it. Therefore, it is of high importance to improve the catalytic
properties of platinum, while in turn decreasing the amount of platinum needed for
industrial applications. This would make platinum a more obtainable and usable
catalyst for industrial and consumer use.1,2,3
Mesoporous platinum films have a higher surface area to volume ratio than solid
platinum catalysts, which could increase their catalytic activity while reducing the
amount of platinum used in synthesising the film. This report explores a variety of
methods at producing platinum films by lyotropic liquid crystal templating onto a
platinum single crystal surface which is {111} in topography. The film is characterised
by cyclic voltammetry, scanning electron microscopy, focused ion beam scanning
electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy.
The film synthesis method has been tailored from the methods found in literature to
obtain an electrocatalytically active mesoporous platinum film which has uniform
surface properties. The film activity has then been compared with the activity of
platinum single crystal surfaces for alcohol oxidation. This includes studying the
oxidation potential peak maxima and the current density peak maxima and observing
how the films compare with the single crystal.
It has been established that the Pt film, deposited using a deposition method that has
been tailored to give small and uniform pores, has size selectivity towards alcohols
with an aliphatic chain length of three or less. This is valuable experimentally for a Pt
catalyst film to selectively oxidise alcohols with shorter aliphatic chains (one to three
carbons) over larger alcohol molecules with aliphatic chains longer than three carbons.