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Two key problems inhibiting the commercialization of direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) are the cost of the precious metals employed and the sluggish kinetics and catalyst poisoning by CO or CHO species. Research to solve the first drawback [1][2][3][4] focuses on the reduction of precious metal loading, which is achieved by increasing the catalysts specific surface area and its accessibility. For the second problem, advanced electrocatalyst design relies on the "bifunctional approach", [5][6][7][8][9][10] in which a second compound such as ruthenium or RuO 2 ·x H 2 O assists the oxidation of CO or CHO species by adsorption of oxygen-containing species close to the poisoned Pt sites. In contrast to previous work on PtRu alloy catalysts, [11][12][13] Rolison and co-workers [14,15] emphasized the importance of hydrous ruthenium oxides because the RuO 2 ·x H 2 O speciation of Ru in nanoscale PtRu blacks shows both high electron and proton conductivity, which results in a much more active catalyst for methanol oxidation. However, direct evidence of the catalytic function of hydrous oxides is very scarce.Mixed proton-electron conducting materials should be ideal catalyst supports for DMFCs since they allow for low ohmic resistance in both the proton and electron conduction at the same time. As hydrous ruthenium(IV) oxide has been reported to contain liquid or liquid-like regions of water to

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