Morphology dependence of electrochemical properties on palladium nanocrystals

Jinchang Fan; Kun Qi; Hong Chen; Weitao Zheng; Xiaoqiang Cui

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2016.11.061

Morphology dependence of electrochemical properties on palladium nanocrystals

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2017 Mar 15:490:190-196. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2016.11.061. Epub 2016 Nov 17.

Authors

Jinchang Fan¹, Kun Qi¹, Hong Chen², Weitao Zheng¹, Xiaoqiang Cui³

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Automotive Simulation and Control, Department of Materials Science, and Key Laboratory of Automobile Materials of MOE, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, People's Republic of China.
² State Key Laboratory of Automotive Simulation and Control, Department of Materials Science, and Key Laboratory of Automobile Materials of MOE, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, People's Republic of China; Department of Control Science & Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, People's Republic of China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Automotive Simulation and Control, Department of Materials Science, and Key Laboratory of Automobile Materials of MOE, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: xqcui@jlu.edu.cn.

PMID: 27912117
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2016.11.061

Abstract

In recent years, shape control has received the most attention in the exploration of Pd nanocrystals (NCs). However, exploring an efficient approach for the systematic production of Pd NCs under similar reaction conditions still presents a significant challenge, which is significantly important to clearly explain the effectiveness of morphology on the catalytic activity of Pd NCs. We designed and accomplished a facile strategy for the morphology transformation between Pd nanosheets and Pd nanotetrahedra by simply controlling the reaction temperature. A growth mechanism was proposed based on TEM images of the time-dependent morphology evolution. The Pd nanosheets and Pd nanotetrahedra exhibit higher activity for the methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) and oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) compared with the benchmark Pd/C catalysts, and their activities are dependent on the morphology. In particular, Pd nanosheets show an increased activity by 3.81 (MOR) and 2.86 (ORR) times due to their large specific surface area and exposed facets.

Keywords: Electrochemistry; Fuel cells; Pd nanostructures; Shape control synthesis; Two-dimensional material.