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Title: Synthesis and Characterization of Pt–Ag Alloy Nanocages with Enhanced Activity and Durability toward Oxygen Reduction

Journal Article · · Nano Letters
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [1];  [2];  [1]
  1. Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory Univ., Atlanta, GA (United States)
  2. Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI (United States)
  3. Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States)
  4. Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States); Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Engineering the elemental composition of metal nanocrystals offers an effective strategy for the development of catalysts or electrocatalysts with greatly enhanced activity. Herein, we report the synthesis of Pt–Ag alloy nanocages with an outer edge length of 18 nm and a wall thickness of about 3 nm. Such nanocages with a composition of Pt19Ag81 could be readily prepared in one step through the galvanic replacement reaction between Ag nanocubes and a Pt(II) precursor. Here, after 10 000 cycles of potential cycling in the range of 0.60–1.0 V as in an accelerated durability test, the composition of the nanocages changed to Pt56Ag44, together with a specific activity of 1.23 mA cm–2 toward oxygen reduction, which was 3.3 times that of a state-of-the-art commercial Pt/C catalyst (0.37 mA cm–2) prior to durability testing. Density functional theory calculations attributed the increased activity to the stabilization of the transition state for breaking the O–O bond in molecular oxygen. Even after 30 000 cycles of potential cycling, the mass activity of the nanocages only dropped from 0.64 to 0.33 A mg–1Pt, which was still about two times that of the pristine Pt/C catalyst (0.19 A mg–1Pt).

Research Organization:
Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
Contributing Organization:
Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory; the Center for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory; the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC); and the UW-Madison Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC)
Grant/Contract Number:
FG02-05ER15731
OSTI ID:
1398266
Journal Information:
Nano Letters, Vol. 16, Issue 10; ISSN 1530-6984
Publisher:
American Chemical SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 139 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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A Mesoporous Nanorattle‐Structured Pd@PtRu Electrocatalyst journal August 2019
Toward affordable and sustainable use of precious metals in catalysis and nanomedicine journal November 2018
Enhanced Oxygen Reduction and Methanol Oxidation Electrocatalysis over Bifunctional PtPdIr Mesoporous Hollow Nanospheres journal September 2019
Elucidating the composition of PtAg surface alloys with atomic-scale imaging and spectroscopy journal October 2019
Recent Advances on Controlled Synthesis and Engineering of Hollow Alloyed Nanotubes for Electrocatalysis journal July 2018
Random Alloyed versus Intermetallic Nanoparticles: A Comparison of Electrocatalytic Performance journal July 2018
Porous platinum–silver bimetallic alloys: surface composition and strain tunability toward enhanced electrocatalysis journal January 2018
Solvent-mediated length tuning of ultrathin platinum–cobalt nanowires for efficient electrocatalysis journal January 2018
Au−Pd Selectivity‐switchable Alcohol‐oxidation Catalyst: Controlling the Duality of the Mechanism using a Multivariate Approach journal June 2019
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Active Sites Derived from Heteroatom Doping in Carbon Materials for Oxygen Reduction Reaction book December 2018
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Facile synthesis of Pt–Ag octahedral and tetrahedral nanocrystals with enhanced activity and durability toward methanol oxidation journal October 2018
PtPdAg Hollow Nanodendrites: Template‐Free Synthesis and High Electrocatalytic Activity for Methanol Oxidation Reaction journal November 2019
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Methanol Oxidation Reaction Performance on Graphene-Supported PtAg Alloy Nanocatalyst: Contrastive Study of Electronic and Geometric Effects Induced from Ag Doping journal April 2018
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Trimetallic PtPdCo mesoporous nanopolyhedra with hollow cavities journal January 2019
Au-Cu-Ag Nanorods Synthesized by Seed-Mediated Coreduction and Their Optical Properties journal March 2017
A general seed-mediated approach to the synthesis of AgM (M = Au, Pt, and Pd) core–shell nanoplates and their SERS properties journal January 2017
Hollow Metal Nanocrystals with Ultrathin, Porous Walls and Well-Controlled Surface Structures journal July 2018
Defects and Interfaces on PtPb Nanoplates Boost Fuel Cell Electrocatalysis journal November 2017
Tungsten‐Doped L1 0 ‐PtCo Ultrasmall Nanoparticles as a High‐Performance Fuel Cell Cathode journal October 2019