ORIGINAL PAPER Electrodeposited platinum catalysts over hierarchical carbon monolithic support Mariano M. Bruno Æ Esteban A. Franceschini Æ Gabriel A. Planes Æ Horacio R. Corti Received: 22 April 2009 / Accepted: 16 August 2009 / Published online: 28 August 2009 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 Abstract Mesoporous deposits of platinum catalysts were electrodeposited over monolith carbon with hierar- chical porous structure. The liquid crystal used as a tem- plate allowed the electrodeposition of the catalyst on the outer region of the carbon with low penetration in the porous structure. The platinum hexagonal mesostructured deposits exhibits an excellent stability enhanced by the roughness of the carbon support. The mass activity for the electrooxidation of methanol of the mesoporous Pt catalyst supported on the hierarchical carbon is similar to that observed on gold and to that reported for commercial Pt nanoparticulated catalysts, even when this catalyst has a smaller Pt load than the commercial one. Also, the poi- soning rate of the mesoporous catalyst is lower than that observed for the commercial catalyst. The integrated sys- tem of structured materials could be suitable for the fab- rication of modified electrodes in small scale applications. Keywords Platinum  Mesoporous catalyst  Hierarchical carbon  Methanol oxidation  Poisoning rate Abbreviations PEM Polymer exchange membrane HC Hierarchical carbon RF Resorcinol formaldehyde MC Mesopororous catalyst HCMC Hierarchical carbon–mesopororous catalyst ca. Circa RHE Reversible hydrogen electrode d Poisoning rate RMS Root mean square 1 Introduction Nanostructured materials are good candidates for innova- tive applications in fuel cells [1], supercapacitors [2], electrochemical sensors [3], and other electrochemical devices. In the last two decades several methods of pro- duction of structured materials were proposed, leading to a wide range of materials with tailored composition, struc- ture and properties (selected redox reactions, mass trans- port management, increased electroactive area), as recently reviewed [4, 5]. Several devices employed to generate, and store energy or energy vectors, like hydrogen, are ground on electro- chemical reactions [2, 3, 6–10]. The efficiency of an electrochemical process could be strongly affected by the accessibility of the gaseous or liquid reactants to the cat- alysts surface, the release of the products of the reaction, or the blocking of the catalyst electroactive area. Therefore, their performance could be improved beyond the intrinsic properties of the used materials by a suitable design and integration of the different components of the device. In the case of a fuel cell these components include the gas dif- fusion layer, the catalyst support and the catalysts itself. Metals such as nickel, platinum, iridium, rhodium, etc. and its alloys are capable of catalyst a wide variety of M. M. Bruno  E. A. Franceschini  H. R. Corti (&) Grupo de Celdas de Combustible, Departamento de Fı ´sica de la Materia Condensada, Centro Ato ´mico Constituyentes, CNEA Av. General Paz 1499 (1650), San Martı ´n, Buenos Aires, Argentina e-mail: hrcorti@cnea.gov.ar G. A. Planes Departamento de Quı ´mica, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicoquı ´micas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Rı ´o Cuarto, Agencia Postal No 3, 5800 Rı ´o Cuarto, Argentina 123 J Appl Electrochem (2010) 40:257–263 DOI 10.1007/s10800-009-9999-7