Sociedade Brasileira de Química, SBQ, Journal of the Brazilian Chemical Society, 2013
DOI: 10.5935/0103-5053.20130196
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In this work, the ethanol oxidation reaction (EOR) was investigated using ternary nanostructured materials composed of IrPtSn/C in mass proportions of Ir:Pt:Sn at 60:30:10, 60:20:20 and 60:10:30, prepared with a polymeric precursor method and compared with commercial electrocatalyst PtSn/C E-TEK. X-ray diffractometry was used to obtain information about the structure of the material. The transmission electron microscopy showed particle sizes of 5-7 nm. The electrocatalytic activity was investigated using chronoamperometry experiments at 0.5 V vs. RHE and by in situ Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy by attenuated total reflectance (FTIR-ATR) experiments. From in situ FTIR-ATR experiments, it can be seen that using the best material IrPtSn/C 60:20:20, the acetaldehyde was produced at high intensities and CO2 at lower intensities. The use of IrPtSn/C 60:20:20 materials became possible to diminish the Pt fraction to ca. 73% in comparison to the PtSn/C E-TEK electrocatalyst, with an improvement of ca. 282% in the current density of the chronoamperometric experiments.