Highly Enhanced Electrocatalytic Oxygen Reduction Performance Observed in Bimetallic Palladium-Based Nanowires Prepared under Ambient, Surfactantless Conditions

Abstract

We have employed an ambient, template-based technique that is simple, efficient, and surfactantless to generate a series of bimetallic Pd(1-x)Au(x) and Pd(1-x)Pt(x) nanowires with control over composition and size. Our as-prepared nanowires maintain significantly enhanced activity toward oxygen reduction as compared with commercial Pt nanoparticles and other 1D nanostructures, as a result of their homogeneous alloyed structure. Specifically, Pd(9)Au and Pd(4)Pt nanowires possess oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activities of 0.49 and 0.79 mA/cm(2), respectively, which are larger than the analogous value for commercial Pt nanoparticles (0.21 mA/cm(2)). In addition, core-shell Pt~Pd(9)Au nanowires have been prepared by electrodepositing a Pt monolayer shell and the corresponding specific, platinum mass, and platinum group metal mass activities were found to be 0.95 mA/cm(2), 2.08 A/mg(Pt), and 0.16 A/mg(PGM), respectively. The increased activity and catalytic performance is accompanied by improved durability toward ORR.

Multimetallic Mesoporous Spheres Through Surfactant‐Directed Synthesis

“…Noble metal nanostructures have received much attention due to their broad applications in hydrogenation reactions, coupling reactions, fuel cells, and localized surface plasma resonances, etc 1. Thanks to previously extensive efforts, noble metal catalysts have made significant progress in the applications of fuel cells for solving the problem of energy crisis.…”

An Overview of One-Dimensional Metal Nanostructures for Electrocatalysis

“…The Pd/ Fe bimetallic nanotube-PC membrane electrode was used as electrocatalysts of ascorbic acid, showing the substantially low overpotential, high selectivity and very good working and storage stability [69]. As seedless and surfactantless synthesis method at the ambient environment, Wong and co-workers developed the U-tube double diffusion technique for one-dimensional metal nanowires with controllable morphology, shape, size, and composition [70][71][72][73]. The crystalline nanowires were prepared using a commercial PC membrane, whose pores were filled with a precursor and a reducing agent held in separate half cells by means of double diffusion.…”

“…Later, they employed the same method to prepare high-quality, single crystalline, submicrometer (270 nm) or nanosized (45 nm) Pd nanowires to explore the size-dependent electrochemical performance of both Pd nanowires, which revealed a distinctive size-dependent oxygen reduction activity enhancement as the wire diameter was decreased [71]. Recently, the morphology-and composition-dependent performance of PtPd nanowires and PdAu nanowires prepared using this method was examined by the same group on the basis of methanol and formic acid oxidation and oxygen reduction behavior [72,73].…”

Electrocatalyst for the Oxygen Reduction Reaction: from the Nanoscale to the Macroscale

“…Koenigsmann et al reported the formation of 1D nanostructures through electroless deposition coupled with a template. Due to the properties of the 1D structure, the activity can be enhanced [12]. In Fig.…”