Enhanced Oxygen Reduction Activity of Platinum Monolayer on Gold Nanoparticles

Minhua Shao; Amra Peles; Krista Shoemaker; Mallika Gummalla; Peter N Njoki; Jin Luo; Chuan-Jian Zhong

doi:10.1021/jz1015789

Enhanced Oxygen Reduction Activity of Platinum Monolayer on Gold Nanoparticles

J Phys Chem Lett. 2011 Jan 20;2(2):67-72. doi: 10.1021/jz1015789. Epub 2010 Dec 22.

Authors

Minhua Shao¹, Amra Peles², Krista Shoemaker¹, Mallika Gummalla², Peter N Njoki³, Jin Luo³, Chuan-Jian Zhong³

Affiliations

¹ †UTC Power, South Windsor, Connecticut 06074, United States.
² ‡United Technologies Research Center, East Hartford, Connecticut 06118, United States.
³ §Chemistry Department, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, New York 13902, United States.

PMID: 26295523
DOI: 10.1021/jz1015789

Abstract

The increase in oxygen binding energy was previously proposed to account for the lower oxygen reduction activity of a Pt monolayer supported on Au(111) single crystal than that on Pd(111) and pure Pt(111) surfaces. This single-crystal based understanding, however, cannot explain the new finding of a 1.6-fold increase of oxygen reduction activity on Pt monolayer-modified 3-nm Au nanoparticles (Pt/Au/C) in comparison with that on Pt/Pd/C with a similar particle size. The Pt/Au/C catalyst also has an activity higher than that of a state-of-the-art 2.8-nm Pt/C catalyst. Our new experimental results and density functional theory calculations demonstrate that a significant compressive strain in the surface of the core nanoparticles plays a role in the observed activity enhancement.

Keywords: density functional theory; electrocatalyst; gold nanoparticle; oxygen reduction reaction; particle size effect; platinum monolayer; shape control.