Mesoporous Pt nanospheres with designed pore surface as highly active electrocatalyst† †Electronic supplementary information (ESI) available. See DOI: 10.1039/c5sc03779d Click here for additional data file.

A novel strategy for large-scale synthesis of shapeand size-controlled mesoporous Pt nanospheres (MPNs) through a slow reduction reaction in the presence of surfactant is reported here for the first time. The slow reduction reaction exclusively results in well-defined mesoporous architectures distinctly different from the dendritic constructions reported previously. More importantly, abundant catalytically active sites are created on the highly accessible mesoporous surfaces by the selective adsorption of bromide ions. The MPNs prepared by using the new synthetic route not only show superior electrochemical performance toward methanol oxidation reaction and oxygen reduction reaction, but also exhibit extremely high structural thermostability, which makes them promising catalysts for industrial applications.