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Trimetallic Au@PdPb nanowires for oxygen reduction reaction

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Abstract

The development of highly efficient and stable Pd-based catalysts is crucial to improve their sluggish oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) kinetics in acid media. To improve ORR activity and utilization efficiency of Pd, an ideal catalyst should have ORR-favorable chemical environment, optimized geometric structure, and long periods of operation. In this work, we first synthesize a novel trimetallic Au@PdPb core-shell catalyst consisting of PdPb alloy nano-layers grown on the surface of ultrathin Au nanowires (NWs) by a two-step water-bath method. The Au@PdPb NWs have the merits of anisotropic one-dimensional nanostructure, high utilization efficiency of Pd atoms and doping of Pb atoms. Because of the structural and multiple compositional advantages, Au@PdPb NWs exhibit remarkably enhanced ORR activity with a high half-wave potential (0.827 V), much better than those of commercial Pd black (0.788 V) and bimetallic Au@Pd NWs (0.803 V). Moreover, Au@PdPb NWs display better electrocatalytic stability for the ORR than those of Pd black and Au@Pd NWs. This study demonstrates the validity of our approach for deriving highly ORR-active Pd-based catalysts by modifying their structure and composition.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Academic Research Fund (AcRF) Tier 1 Grant (No. RG105/19) from the Ministry of Education in Singapore, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21875112), and the China Scholarship Council (No. 201906090199).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China

    Xian Jiang & Jiancheng Zhou

  2. School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 637459, Singapore

    Xian Jiang, Ruopeng Zhao & Jong-Min Lee

  3. Jiangsu Key Laboratory of New Power Batteries, Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center of Biomedical Functional Materials, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Xian Jiang, Yuexin Xiong & Yawen Tang

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  1. Xian Jiang
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  2. Yuexin Xiong
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  3. Ruopeng Zhao
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  4. Jiancheng Zhou
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Correspondence to Jiancheng Zhou, Jong-Min Lee or Yawen Tang.

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Jiang, X., Xiong, Y., Zhao, R. et al. Trimetallic Au@PdPb nanowires for oxygen reduction reaction. Nano Res. 13, 2691–2696 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-2911-9

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