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Carbon Coated Metal Nanoparticles for Electrocatalysis

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Abstract

To promote the performance of nanoparticle electrocatalysts, a facile hydrothermal method is developed to generate core–shell nanocomposites with a metal catalyst core and a carbon shell. In this method, glucose serves as the reducing agent and carbon precursor while cetyltrimethylammonium surfactants serve as both pore structure-directing agents and nanoparticle capping agent. The accessibility of the metal catalyst core was examined by gas-phase ethylene hydrogenation and the electrocatalytic activity was tested by formic acid oxidation (FOR). The selection of halide counter ions used during the synthesis was found to be critical. The optimized sample of Pd-carbon nanocomposite exhibits a FOR current density of 2.55 mA/cm2, which is higher than that of un-coated Pd nanoparticles with no support (0.89 mA/cm2) and with carbon nanotube support (1.08 mA/cm2).

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Acknowledgments

The donors of the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund are acknowledged. The authors thank the support from Boston College. The authors thank Prof. Dunwei Wang and Xiahui Yao for help with Raman Spectroscopy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Merkert Chemistry Center, Boston College, 2609 Beacon Street, Chestnut Hill, MA, 02467, USA

    Margaret K. Sheehan, Michael Rudden, Huaqiang Cai & Chia-Kuang Tsung

Authors
  1. Margaret K. Sheehan
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  2. Michael Rudden
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  3. Huaqiang Cai
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  4. Chia-Kuang Tsung
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chia-Kuang Tsung.

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Sheehan, M.K., Rudden, M., Cai, H. et al. Carbon Coated Metal Nanoparticles for Electrocatalysis. Catal Lett 146, 309–318 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10562-015-1662-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10562-015-1662-9

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