Noble-metal nanomaterials are attracting increasing research interest due to their promising applications in electrochemical catalysis, for example. Although great efforts have been devoted to the size-, shape-, and architecture-controlled synthesis of noble-metal nanomaterials, their crystal-phase-controlled synthesis is still in its infancy. Here, for the first time, this study reports high-yield synthesis of Au nanorods (NRs) with alternating 4H/face-centered cubic (fcc) crystal-phase heterostructures via a one-pot wet-chemical method. The coexistence of 4H and fcc phases is relatively stable, and the 4H/fcc Au NRs can serve as templates for crystal-phase-controlled epitaxial growth of other metals. As an example, bimetallic 4H/fcc Au@Pd core-shell NRs are synthesized via the epitaxial growth of Pd on 4H/fcc Au NRs. Significantly, the 4H/fcc Au@Pd NRs show superior mass activity toward the ethanol oxidation reaction, i.e., 6.2 and 4.9 times those of commercial Pd black and Pt/C catalysts, respectively. It is believed that this new synthetic strategy can be used to prepare other novel catalysts for various promising applications.
Keywords: Au@Pd; core-shell nanorods; crystal-phase heterostructures; electrocatalytic ethanol oxidation; epitaxial growth.
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