Engineering Heterostructured Pd-Bi2Te3 Doughnut/Pd Hollow Nanospheres for Ethylene Glycol Electrooxidation

Hui Xu; Bingji Huang; Yitao Zhao; Guangyu He; Haiqun Chen

doi:10.1021/acs.inorgchem.2c00296

Engineering Heterostructured Pd-Bi₂Te₃ Doughnut/Pd Hollow Nanospheres for Ethylene Glycol Electrooxidation

Inorg Chem. 2022 Mar 14;61(10):4533-4540. doi: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.2c00296. Epub 2022 Mar 2.

Authors

Hui Xu¹, Bingji Huang¹, Yitao Zhao¹, Guangyu He¹, Haiqun Chen¹

Affiliation

¹ Key Laboratory of Advanced Catalytic Materials and Technology, Advanced Catalysis and Green Manufacturing Collaborative Innovation Center, Changzhou University, Changzhou 213164, Jiangsu Province, China.

PMID: 35236071
DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.2c00296

Abstract

The electrooxidation of ethylene glycol (EG) is of vital significance for the conversion from biomass energy into electrical energy via direct fuel cells. However, the EG oxidation reaction (EGOR) suffers from poor efficiency due to the limitation of high-performance electrocatalysts for cleaving the C-C bonds. Herein, this limitation is successfully addressed by fabricating the doughnut-shaped Pd-Bi₂Te₃ heterostructured catalyst. Notably, the heterojunction Pd-Bi₂Te₃ nanocatalyst has been demonstrated to be highly active toward the EGOR with superb activity and durability, in which a mass activity as high as 2420.8 mA mg^-1 is achieved in alkaline media, being 1.7 times higher than that of the commercial Pd/C catalyst. Upon combination of experimental results with mechanism studies, it is indicated that the remarkable EGOR performance is attributed to the enlarged active areas that stemmed from the doughnut-like structure, as well as the strong synergistic effect from Pd-Bi₂Te₃ and Pd. More importantly, the highly electroactive Pd-Bi₂Te₃ can accelerate charge transfer and boost the oxidation of CO-like intermediates, which are conducive to the enhancement in electrochemical stability.