Facile synthesis of PdIr nanoporous aggregates as highly active electrocatalyst towards methanol and ethylene glycol oxidation

Abstract

Noble metal nanoporous composites with more active sites, lower cost and excellent catalytic activity are extensively used in many fields, therefore, many efforts have been devoted to their synthesis and structure modification/manipulation. In this work, we developed one-pot facile approach to synthesis PdIr nanoporous aggregates (PdIr NAs). Specific temperature-rise program was employed to simultaneously reduce two metals and control the morphology of products. Meanwhile oleylamine (OAm) was used as co-reductant, surfactant, and solvent. PdIr NAs were constructed of aggregation of tiny nanoparticles, and finally displayed as three dimensional continuous structures. The electrocatalytic performance of the as-prepared catalysts towards methanol and ethylene glycol (EG) oxidation were investigated by cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry. The results demonstrate that the introduction of Ir can obviously promote the methanol and EG oxidation performance in the alkaline medium. Compared with single component catalysts (Pd and Ir), the as-prepared Pd2Ir1 NAs catalysts exhibit more excellent activity and better stability for the electrooxidation towards methanol and EG with nice tolerance ability of CO. In conclusion, we present a general template-less method for the synthesis of PdIr NAs and developed a novel electrocatalyst with excellent catalytic activity in fuel cells.