Abstract
Recently, the development of high-performance non-platinum electrocatalysts for fuel cell applications has been gaining attention. Palladium-based nanoalloys are considered as promising candidates to substitute platinum catalysts for cathodic and anodic reactions in fuel cells. Here, we develop a facile route to synthesize dendritic palladium–copper–cobalt trimetallic nanoalloys as robust multifunctional electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction and formic acid oxidation. To the best of our knowledge, the mass activities of the dendritic Pd59Cu30Co11 nanoalloy toward oxygen reduction and formic acid oxidation are higher than those previously reported for non-platinum metal nanocatalysts. The Pd59Cu30Co11 nanoalloys also exhibit superior durability for oxygen reduction and formic acid oxidation as well as good antimethanol/ethanol interference ability compared to a commercial platinum/carbon catalyst. The high performance of the dendritic Pd59Cu30Co11 nanoalloys is attributed to a combination of effects, including defects, a synergistic effect, change of d-band center of palladium, and surface strain.
Highlights
The development of high-performance non-platinum electrocatalysts for fuel cell applications has been gaining attention
The excellent electrocatalytic performance of the as-synthesized dendritic Pd59Cu30Co11 nanoalloys is mainly ascribed to the following reasons: (1) The special dendritic nanostructure of the
Pd59Cu30Co11 nanoalloy can provide abundant defects, such as low-coordination number atoms, grain boundaries, lattice disorder, nanotwins, gap atoms, and vacancies, which have been confirmed to boost the catalytic performance in catalytic reactions[4,19,43,47,48,49,50,51]
Summary
The development of high-performance non-platinum electrocatalysts for fuel cell applications has been gaining attention. To the best of our knowledge, the mass activities of the dendritic Pd59Cu30Co11 nanoalloy toward oxygen reduction and formic acid oxidation are higher than those previously reported for non-platinum metal nanocatalysts. Platinum (Pt) is widely applied as a catalyst for anode and cathode reactions in FCs4–8, but many factors, including high cost that accounts for over 55% of the total cost[9], scarcity, poor durability, and sluggish reaction kinetics of the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), tremendously impede the commercial application of FCs. developing highly effective non-Pt alloy catalysts for FCs has aroused great interest and concern of researchers from all over the world since such alloys can enhance the catalytic performance through optimizing the binding energy between reactants, intermediates and products with the alloy surface at the nanoscale[10,11,12,13]. No alcohol tolerance experiments were mentioned on aforementioned non-Pt metal catalysts
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