Nanostructure flowers of Pt and Pt-Ru were simply electrodeposited on indium tin oxide (ITO) covered glass substrates and then have been successfully employed as a model catalyst to study the electro-oxidation of ethanol. The electrocatalytic properties of Pt/ITO and nanostructured flower like Pt-Ru/ITO electrodes for ethanol oxidation have been investigated by cyclic voltammetry in 0.5 M C2H5OH + 0.5 M H2SO4 aqueous solutions at room temperature. The results show that the existing Ru improves catalytic activity of the Pt based electrode for ethanol oxidation since the stability of the electrode and current density increase significantly and peak potential shifts to lower values. We also examined the applicability of the introduced catalyst for oxidation of ethanol in alkaline medium. We further showed that this Pt-Ru/ITO electrode could act as an electrochemical sensor for the determination of alcohol concentration in neutral pH. The proposed sensor enables determination of ethanol in the relatively large linear range (25 μM –9.5 mM), low detection limit (5 μM), high sensitivity (0.0566 mA mM−1 cm−2) and long-term stability (over six weeks).
