A photoactive process cascaded electrocatalysis for enhanced methanol oxidation over Pt-MXene-TiO₂ composite

Highly efficient photo-assisted electrocatalysis for methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) realizes the conversion of solar and chemical energy into electric energy simultaneously. Here we report a Pt-MXene-TiO₂ composite for highly efficient MOR via a photoactive cascaded electro-catalytic process. With light (UV and visible light) irradiation, MXene-TiO₂ serves as the photo active centre (photoinduced hole) to activate the methanol molecules, while Pt particles are the active centre for the following electro-catalytic oxidation of those activated methanol molecules. Pt-MXene-TiO₂ catalyst exhibits a lower onset potential (0.33 V) and an impressive mass activity of 2,750.42 mA·mg^-1_Pt under light illumination. It represents the highest MOR activity ever reported for photo-assisted electrocatalysts. Pt-MXene-TiO₂ also shows excellent CO tolerance ability and stability, in which, after long-term (5,000 s) reaction, still keeps a high mass activity of 1,269.81 mA·mg^-1_Pt (62.66% of its initial activity). The photo-electro-catalytic system proposed in this work offers novel opportunities for exploiting photo-assisted enhancement of highly efficient and stable catalysts for MOR.