Excellent stability fuel cell type methanol sensor based on platinum-decorated mesoporous CrN

Abstract This paper has developed a fuel cell type methanol sensor based on platinum-decorated mesoporous chromium nitride (CrN). Mesoporous CrN is prepared by the zinc-oxygen precursor ammonolysis method, and the polyol method is adopted to load Pt on CrN and XC-72R carbon blacks. The sensor device manufactured by the hot-press process is tested at room temperature and without additional external voltage. The Pt/CrN sensor presents better stability compared with the Pt/C. The overall change in response current of the Pt/CrN sensor is relatively small within one month, while the Pt/C sensor deteriorates faster. Furthermore, the sensitivity of Pt/CrN is 0.0402 μA/ppm, which is 3.26 times higher than that of Pt/C. The Pt/CrN sensor also displays excellent reproducibility. This study indicates that CrN as a kind of supporting material is provided with good application prospects in methanol gas sensing.