Amine–borane assisted synthesis of wavy palladium nanorods on graphene as efficient catalysts for formic acid oxidation

Abstract

Wavy palladium (Pd) nanorods were obtained by controlled synthesis by using amine-boranes as the reducing agents. Thanks to the unique structure and strong interaction with graphene, the as-synthesized Pd nanorods supported on graphene exhibit much enhanced electrocatalytic activity towards formic acid oxidation as compared with Pd nanoparticles.

Reaction‐Kinetics‐Tuned Synthesis of Platinum Nanorods and Nanodendrites with Enhanced Electrocatalytic Performance for Oxygen Reduction

“…Solution‐phase synthesis has been shown to be the most efficient way to control the size and shape of metal nanocrystallites, as it offers diverse parameters for tuning the reaction thermodynamics and kinetics, such as solvents, metal precursors and reductants, capping agents, temperatures, and so on. Oleylamine (OAm) has been widely used in the solution‐phase synthesis of 1D metal nanostructures, because of the many roles it may play in nanocrystal growth, for example, as a mild reducing agent, capping agent, soft template through self‐assembly, and coordinating ligand with metal ions …”

One-pot synthesis of carbon-supported monodisperse palladium nanoparticles as excellent electrocatalyst for ethanol and formic acid oxidation

“…It is also higher than the activity reported in recent literature. For instances, Du et al obtained a peak current of 5.7 A (mg Pd) À1 on Pd nanorods [39]; Mazumder et al showed a 0.2 A (mg Pd) À1 peak current on 7 nm Pd nanoparticles [45].…”

“…It has been generally accepted that the formic acid oxidation reaction proceeds on Pd mainly through the ''direct pathway'' without CO poisoning [34,39]. Therefore, it is initialized at potentials which are much more negative than the CO stripping potential.…”

“…This implies that they have similar binding strength to CO [39]. We estimated the ECSAs of the catalysts according to the charges in the CO oxidation peaks by assuming that the oxidation of a monolayer of CO on Pd corresponds to a charge of 420 mC cm À2 .…”

“…In comparison with the usually used reducing agents such as borohydrides, amineeborane complexes have a relatively mild reducing ability, which can avoid the overgrowth of nanoparticles. Furthermore, their reducing abilities can be regulated by changing the alkyl substitution on nitrogen [39]. Here, we find that N,N-diethylaniline-borane can be an appropriate reductant for Pd (acac) 2 in DMF to yield highly disperse Pd nanoparticles.…”