posted on 2023-12-13, 16:36authored byAgus R. Poerwoprajitno, Qinyu Li, Soshan Cheong, Lucy Gloag, Yuwei Yang, Bijil Subhash, Nicholas M. Bedford, John Watt, Dale L. Huber, J. Justin Gooding, Wolfgang Schuhmann, Richard D. Tilley
Controlling
the coordination environment of the nanocatalyst surface
is a major synthetic challenge to producing electrocatalysts with
high activity and high stability. This is particularly important for
the methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) in which multiple neighboring
metal atoms are needed to prevent CO poisoning. Using a combination
of tunable Pt-island size and a spreading process, we can vary the
Pt loading on branched Ru nanoparticles, which leads to tunable proportions
of Pt–Pt and Pt–Ru neighboring atoms at the surface.
The controlled coordination environments are shown to be critical
to stripping poisoning CO intermediates and can be precisely tuned
to achieve highly active and stable MOR catalysts. These results show
a new concept in synthetically controlling the coordination environment
around a catalytic site for improved activity and stability that can
be applied to other multimetal nanocatalysts.