Performance evaluation of porous electrocatalysts via normalization of theactive surface

When comparing the rate of electrochemical processes at different porous el ectrocatalysts a surface normalization should be used. It is shown for the case of methanol oxidation at PtRu layers electrodeposited on gold substrat es that substantially different data are obtained for current, mass spectro metry signals and integrated IR band intensities of the products, with and without normalization of the catalyst surface used. Using stripping of satu rated CO coverage as a normalization tool, cyclic voltammograms, on line MS and in situ FTIR spectroscopy give reasonable agreement of catalytic activ ity towards methanol oxidation.