Recent Advances on Controlled Synthesis and Engineering of Hollow Alloyed Nanotubes for Electrocatalysis

Abstract

The past decade has witnessed great progress in the synthesis and electrocatalytic applications of 1D hollow alloy nanotubes with controllable compositions and fine structures. Hollow nanotubes have been explored as promising electrocatalysts in the fuel cell reactions due to their well‐controlled surface structure, size, porosity, and compositions. In addition, owing to the self‐supporting ability of 1D structure, hollow nanotubes are capable of avoiding catalyst aggregation and carbon corrosion during the catalytic process, which are two other issues for the widely investigated carbon‐supported nanoparticle catalysts. It is currently a great challenge to achieve high activity and stability at a relatively low cost to realize commercialization of these catalysts. An overview of the structural and compositional properties of 1D hollow alloy nanotubes, which provide a large number of accessible active sites, void spaces for electrolytes/reactants impregnation, and structural stability for suppressing aggregation, is presented. The latest advances on several strategies such as hard template and self‐templating methods for controllable synthesis of hollow alloyed nanotubes with controllable structures and compositions are then summarized. Benefiting from the advantages of the unique properties and facile synthesis approaches, the capability of 1D hollow nanotubes is then highlighted by discussing examples of their applications in fuel‐cell‐related electrocatalysis. Finally, the remaining challenges and potential solutions in the field are summarized to provide some useful clues for the future development of 1D hollow alloy nanotube materials.

Nanocatalysis by noble metal nanoparticles: controlled synthesis for the optimization and understanding of activities

“…[8][9][10][11][12] For instance, excellent and comprehensive reviews have been published on the control of size, shape, composition, and structure in NPs for catalytic applications. [13][14][15][16] Among several nanocatalysts, those based on noble metal NPs deserve special attention due to their electronic, chemical, and even optical properties (in the case of transformations enhanced or mediated by plasmonic effects). [17][18][19] Nevertheless, conventional catalysts based on noble metal NPs obtained by solution phase methods still display poor or little control over their properties (size, shape, composition, facet exposition, etc.)…”

Atomic Thickness Catalysts: Synthesis and Applications

“…to drive the formation of nanostructures on the targeted substrates. Electrochemical atomic layer deposition (E-ALD) such as galvanic replacement reduction (GRR) is a simple and attractive electrochemical means to obtain metal monolayers on foreign metal electrodes and has been used to produce different metal-based nanostructures [82,83] and monolayer metal film. [84][85][86][87][88] Electrochemical reactions include the oxidation of one sacrificial metal by the ions of another metal endowing with a higher reduction potential.…”

Nanowire Genome: A Magic Toolbox for 1D Nanostructures

“…Several kinds of NPs, including noble metal NPs and metal oxide NPs, could graft onto the CNF surface. As shown in Figure 5 (21), Au NPs were grafted to the CNFs via the refluxing of HAuCl 4 ·3H 2 O at 120 °C for 5 h, leading to the formation of a CNF/Au "hybrid fleece." [130] Similarly, CNF/Pt and CNF/Pd "hybrid fleeces" were also successfully prepared.…”

“…[275] Based on these advantages, Cu nanostructures, especially the Cu NWs, have gained wide attention for the applications of electronics, [10] optoelectronics, [276] solar cells, [277][278][279] and catalysts. [21,280] Recently, Cu NWs have been successfully synthesized via a variety of methods including chemical vapor deposition, [281][282][283] template-assisted method, [284][285][286] electrospinning, [287] and solution-phase synthesis. [275,[288][289][290][291][292] Among these strategies, solution-phase synthesis has been the dominant one due to its advantages in product homogeneity and scalability, as well as the option for facile functionalization.…”

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] Recently, the number of nanowire (NW)-based publications has experienced an exponential increase (Figure 1a). Since the seminal review on the semiconductor nanowire in 2010 by the Yang group, [9] the research field of NWs has attracted significant attention and their applications have been extended to numerous fields (Figure 1b), such as electronics, [10][11][12][13] energy storage materials, [14,15] optoelectronics, [16,17] catalysis, [18][19][20][21] sensors, [16,22] and biology. [23] These exciting developments were 1D nanomaterials with high aspect ratio, i.e., nanowires and nanotubes, have inspired considerable research interest thanks to the fact that exotic physical and chemical properties emerge as their diameters approach or fall into certain length scales, such as the wavelength of light, the mean free path of phonons, the exciton Bohr radius, the critical size of magnetic domains, and the exciton diffusion length.…”