One of the key points to develop a cost-effective direct alcohol fuel cell (DAFC) is to investigate cheaper electrocatalysts for the oxidation of alcohol at the anode, allowing an increase in the current density and a decrease in the anodic overvoltage. In this respect, polycrystalline, deposits of platinum and platinum-ruthenium on a CuNi (70:30) alloy support are investigated here. Electro-oxidation of ethanol in 0.5 M NaOH is studied over these electrodes. Cyclic voltammetry, steady state polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy are used to investigate the kinetics and mechanism of ethanol electro-oxidation. Efforts are also made to correlate the catalytic activity of such electrodes with their surface morphology. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.