Poor electrocatalytic activity, insufficient operation durability and low carbon monoxide (CO) tolerance of the Pt-based catalysts are key challenges facing the direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) as promising electrochemical energy conversion device. We here present a new effort to catalyst designed by depositing Pt nanoparticles on two-dimensional (2D) TaC-nanosheet/graphene hybird (Pt/TaC-G) to obtain notable improvement in electrocatalytic performance over the commercial Pt/C. Experiment results from both X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) support that a strong synergetic chemical coupling interaction between the Pt nanoparticles and the 2D TaC-G significantly enhanced electrocatalytic activity for methanol oxidation reaction (MOR). This process can improve the CO tolerance as well as durability of MOR catalysts simultaneously, making it a promising general approach to design and optimize the next generation electrocatalysts in DMFCs. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.