Featured Letter Enhanced electrocatalytic activity and durability of Pt nanoparticles supported on ordered bimodal mesoporous carbon nanowires Daorui Wang a,b , Guoyan Wu a,b , Chengwei Zhang a,b,⇑ , Fuxing Yin a,b,⇑ a School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300130, China b Tianjin Key Laboratory of Materials Laminating Fabrication and Interface Control Technology, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300130, China article info Article history: Received 19 April 2018 Received in revised form 16 May 2018 Accepted 22 May 2018 Available online 23 May 2018 Keywords: Bimodal mesoporous structure Carbon nanowires Porous materials Structural Pt nanoparticles Electrocatalysis abstract Ordered bimodal mesoporous carbon nanowires (OMCWs) is prepared from dual templates that were fabricated by filling silica nanospheres in the channels of porous anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) mem- branes. The prepared OMCWs material exhibits a large surface area (876.7 m 2 g 1 ), ordered large meso- porous (30 nm) nanostructure and small mesopores on the large mesopore walls. Pt nanoparticles are deposited on OMCWs to form Pt/OMCWs electrocatalyst for methanol oxidation reaction (MOR). In Pt/OMCWs, Pt nanoparticles (1.8 nm) are uniformly located on the OMCWs. The Pt/OMCWs catalyst possesses larger electrochemically active surface area (ECSA) (93.3 m 2 g 1 ), higher activity for MOR and better durability compared with the commercial Pt/C catalyst. The good electrochemical perfor- mance of Pt/OMCWs is ascribed to the unique bimodal mesoporous structure that could facilitate the rapid mass transfer and enhanced the dispersion of Pt nanoparticles and the one-dimensional structure that could enhance the electron transport. Ó 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Because of the high power transition density and low emission, direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) have attracted much interest for portable electronic devices. Pt nanoparticles supported on carbon is the most common and effective catalyst for DMFCs [1]. Various nanostructured carbon materials such as carbon spheres [2], meso- porous carbon [3] have been developed as Pt supports. Especially, one-dimensional (1D) nanostructured carbons, such as carbon nanotubes [4] and carbon nanowires [5,6] have received great attentions as a result of its unique morphology that can decrease the ion transport dimension and shorten pathways for electron transport [5,7]. However, nanosized Pt supported on 1D nanostruc- tured carbon may suffer from dissolution and agglomeration dur- ing electrochemical cycling. Ordered mesoporous carbons are of great importance as Pt supports due to its high specific surface area and tailored pore structure. Accordingly, ordered mesoporous car- bon nanowires that combined 1D morphology with the ordered mesoporous structure have received growing interest. However, reactants are usually difficult to attain the active sites when the size of mesopore is too small, which severely limited its high elec- trochemical performance [8]. A very promising strategy could be designing the ordered bimodal mesoporous carbon nanowires (OMCWs), which possess both the interconnected ordered large mesopores and small mesopores on the walls. The former can pro- vide the mass transfer channels; the latter can effectively inhibit the aggregation of Pt nanoparticles. Herein, we first report the Pt nanoparticles supported on ordered bimodal mesoporous carbon nanowires (Pt/OMCWs) and study their electrocatalytic perfor- mance for the methanol oxidation reaction (MOR). The OMCWs is prepared via a surfactant-free rapid method from dual- templates by combining the porous anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) membranes with SiO 2 nanospheres (AAO-SiO 2 template). The large mesoporous walls with small mesopores are generated from the resol (phenol/formaldehyde) in the voids of the SiO 2 nanospheres , which are beneficial to reduce the migration of Pt nanoparticles during the electrochemical reactions. 2. Experimental Fig. 1 presents the procedure for the fabrication of the Pt/OMCWs. The detailed preparation is described below: 2.1. Synthesis of OMCWs The resol (phenol/formaldehyde) was firstly prepared by the published method [9]. The AAO-SiO 2 template (200 nm-pore AAO https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matlet.2018.05.102 0167-577X/Ó 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding authors at: School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300130, China. E-mail addresses: cwzhang@hebut.edu.cn (C. Zhang), yinfuxing@hebut.edu.cn (F. Yin). Materials Letters 228 (2018) 92–95 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Materials Letters journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mlblue