Highly active electrooxidation of ethylene glycol enabled by pinecone-like Pd–Au–Ag nanocatalysts

Abstract

Abstract Facilely tuning the nanocrystals with fascinating morphology represents a versatile approach to fabricate the ideal nanocatalysts with both enhanced catalytic activity and stability toward liquid fuel electrooxidation due to their abundant surface active areas, facilitated charger transfer, as well as the synergistic effects. However, up till now, the rational fabrication of trimetallic nanocrystals with both fascinating morphology and tunable compositions remain a challenge. To this end, we herein demonstrate a facile wet-chemical method to successfully synthesize the unique pinecone-like Pd–Au–Ag nanocatalysts with the assistance of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB). A series of electrochemical measurements have revealed that the resulted pinecone-like Pd–Au–Ag nanocatalysts exhibited unprecedentedly high catalytic activity with the mass and specific activities of 7150.8 mA/mg and 18.2 mA/cm2 toward ethylene glycol oxidation, 7.25 and 2.14 times higher than that of commercial Pd/C (986.4 mA/mg and 8.5 mA/cm2), respectively. Our efforts in this work may open up a new way for maximizing the electrocatalytic performances of catalysts by facilely designing and adjusting their morphologies and we also trust that the electrocatalysts fabricated in this work can be well applied as potential anodic catalysts and beyond.