A simple wet-chemical strategy for facile fabrication of hierarchical PdAu nanodentrites as excellent electrocatalyst for oxygen reduction reaction

Herein, a simple one-pot wet-chemical method was presented for facile preparation of three-dimensional (3D) PdAu nanodentrites (NDs) containing plenty of local high-index and low-index facets at room temperature, adopting 3-amino-1,2,4- triazole-5-carboxylic acid (ATCA) as the structure-guiding agent, without any seed or surfactant. The feeding ratios of the Pd/Au precursors, the concentration of ATCA and the presence of ascorbic acid (AA) have great effects on the PdAu nanostructures. The as-prepared PdAu NDs exhibited dramatically enhanced catalytic properties towards oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) under the alkaline conditions, showing the more positive half-wave potential (0.890 V) relative to commercial Pd black (0.808 V), coupled with the 8.3-fold enlargement in mass activity (MA). This study developed a simple and straightforward approach to prepare advanced PdAu electrocatalysts in fuel cells. (C) 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.