One-pot synthesis of edge-concaved octahedral Au@Pd@Pt nanocrystals for enhanced electrocatalyst toward methanol oxidation

Abstract

Multi-metallic nanocrystals (NCs) with a desirable structure have been of tremendous interest due to their inherent physical and chemical properties and pronounced catalytic performance in numerous electrochemical reactions. However, there has been relatively unexplored on the controlled synthesis of tri-metallic core-shell-shell NCs in comparison to bimetallic core-shell NPs. In the present work, a facile one-pot aqueous synthesis method is developed for the production of tri-metallic Au@Pd@Pt NCs with an edge-concaved octahedral shape without pre-synthesized seeds, controlling the nucleation and growth kinetics of NCs. The prepared NCs exhibit enhanced methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) activity, which can be attributed to edge-concaved region with a high density of under coordinated surface atoms and the modified electronic structures for their optimized binding affinity with adsorbate.