Electrochemically Co-deposited Teeth-like Virus-Platinum Nanohybrids as an Electrocatalyst for Methanol Oxidation Reaction

M13 virus (M13) as scaffolds has a major appeal, owing to their mono-dispersed, fibrillar morphology and engineerable surface reactive sites. Herein we had developed a facile electrocatalyst for energy application. Platinum nanostructures are directly co-deposited from a wild-type M13 (or) two different engineered M13 mixed electrolytes onto the ITO electrodes. The engineered M13 with 4E peptides could specifically nucleate Pt precursor thereby enables the efficient growth of teeth-like structures at the ITO electrode. The electrocatalytic activity of the resulting electrocatalyst toward methanol oxidation in alkaline medium was investigated and found enhanced mass activity (0.321A/mg(Pt)) relative to the catalyst prepared from wild-type M13, Y3E peptides engineered M13 and without M13. Our novel electrocatalyst fabrication can be extended to other metal and metal oxides and its application might be useful to develop novel clean and green energy generating and storage materials.