Sluggish methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) and CO poisoning of platinum electrocatalysts are critical problems in direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs). Here, we design a stable CO tolerant platinum electrocatalyst via a bottom-up method, in which the platinum nanoparticles are deposited on carbon black after coating with polybenzimidazole (PBI) and poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP). By comparison with the PVP post-coated electrocatalyst (CB/PBI/Pt/PVP), the PVP pre-coated electrocatalyst (CB/PBI/PVP/Pt) exhibits comparable durability and CO tolerance due to the similar amount of PVP in the electrocatalyst, suggesting the PVP pre-coating method shows negligible effect on CO tolerance and durability, while the Pt utilization efficiency, methanol oxidation activity and power density of CB/PBI/PVP/Pt are 1.6 times higher than those of CB/PBI/Pt/PVP. Thus, the PVP pre-coated electrocatalyst has better activity due to the non-coated Pt nanoparticles. Meanwhile, CB/PBI/PVP/Pt exhibits highly stable CO tolerance during the durability test, while the CO tolerance of the commercial CB/PtRu seriously deteriorates during the durability test due to the dissolution of Ru nanoparticles. To the best of our knowledge, the maximum power density of CB/PBI/PVP/Pt (104 mW cm−2) is one of the highest values in recent publications.
