Collision Incidents of Single Tetrahexahedral Platinum Nanocrystals Recorded by a Carbon Nanoelectrode

Abstract

AbstractRecently, collision mode has been adopted to study the electrochemical or photoelectrochemical behavior of single particles touching and/or attaching on a biased ultramicroelectrode (UME). However, to correlate the reaction activity to the nanocrystal structure still remains challenging because of: (1) the uncontrolled structure and size of the single nanoparticle; (2) the uncertainty of one particle in each collision incident since the size of UME is much larger than that of the single nanoparticle. To these problems, we synthesized well‐defined convex tetrahexahedral platinum nanocrystals (THH Pt NC) with an average size of 30 nm and fabricated a carbon nanoelectrode through pyrolysis of butane. The current fluctuation caused by oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) during the single collision incident of THH Pt NC was detected by the carbon nanoelectrode. It is reasonable to use nanocrystals with well‐defined morphology and size in the collision experiments. However, the adoption of nanoelectrode will decrease the collision frequency and shorten the standing time of nanocrystals on the electrode surface. How to figure out the kinetics from the current fluctuations in the single collision incident still remains challenging.