Just Accepted
Fan Yang, Ruiqin Ren, Xiaojia Zhang, Muhammad Waqas, Xinglan Peng, Limin Wang, Xiaotian Liu, Du-Hong Chen*, Youjun Fan*, Wei Chen*
Hollow nanowire; Palladium catalyst; Tailoring the electronic structure; Oxygen reduction reaction; Composition-performance relationship
ABSTRACT
Lowering the cost while maintaining the highly
catalytic performance is greatly beneficial for the development of commercial
fuel cells and metal-air batteries. Compared with platinum, palladium holds a
stronger oxygen affinity and high abundance on earth, endowing it a promising
alternative to platinum in anion-exchange membrane fuel cells. However, the
sluggish oxygen reduction reaction of palladium still remains a great issue and
requires the design of stable and efficient palladium-based electrocatalysts.
Here, we report the solvothermal/hydrothermal reduction method to prepare a
series of PdAgx nanowires. The prepared PdAgx NWs exhibit hollow structure, which greatly improves the utilization of Pd
atoms, offering an outstanding ORR performance. Specifically, PdAg2 NWs exhibit an onset potential of 0.92 V and mass activity of 350.7 mA mgPd−1 at 0.7 V vs. RHE for ORR in 0.1 M KOH solution. This work provides a novel
approach for the construction of hollow NWs and their subsequent applications
in other electrocatalytic reactions.