Although explosive studies on pursuing high-performance direct fuel cells in the past decades have been carried out, the lack of cost-efficient anode catalysts for oxidation reaction of clean fuel remain a harsh challenge that greatly hinder the development of fuel cell technology. For addressing these issues, we herein combined both of the morphological and component advantages to engineer an advanced monodispersed PdCu nanoalloy catalysts with ultrasmall diameter. A series of electrochemical measurements have revealed that the resulted monodispersed Pd1Cu1 nanospheres can meet the requirement of high surface area with a high electrochemically active surface area (EASA) values of 31.1m(2)g(-1), which is 4.06 times higher than that of commercial Pd/C. Similarly, the newly-prepared monodispersed PdCu nanospheres also exhibited much higher mass activity and durability than single-phase Pd and commercial Pd/C towards ethylene glycol electrooxidation in the alkaline media. This work may open a new way for maximizing the electrocatalytic performances by combining the advantages of well-dispersed property and extremely small size. (c) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.