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Facile design of Au@Pt core-shell nanostructures: Formation of Pt submonolayers with tunable coverage and their applications in electrocatalysis

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Abstract

A facile design of Pt nanostructures from submonolayer to monolayer has been realized by ion adsorption-in situ electrochemical reduction on Au nanoparticles supported on multiwall carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The as prepared Au@Pt/CNTs catalysts display coverage-specific electrocatalysis. Au@Pt/CNTs with low Pt coverage is inactive towards methanol oxidation whereas it oxidizes formic acid effectively through a direct pathway with mass specific activity 90 times that of a commercial Pt/C catalyst. Due to its inertness to methanol, it shows high performance in the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) with high methanol tolerance. In contrast, simply increasing the Pt coverage to above 40% switches the formic acid oxidation process to both direct and indirect catalytic pathways, and also results in high methanol oxidation activity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Biology and Chemical Technology, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Fulin Zheng, Wing-Tak Wong & Ka-Fu Yung

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  1. Fulin Zheng
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  2. Wing-Tak Wong
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  3. Ka-Fu Yung
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Correspondence to Wing-Tak Wong or Ka-Fu Yung.

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Zheng, F., Wong, WT. & Yung, KF. Facile design of Au@Pt core-shell nanostructures: Formation of Pt submonolayers with tunable coverage and their applications in electrocatalysis. Nano Res. 7, 410–417 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-014-0407-1

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