Ternary metal-metalloid-nonmetal alloy nanowires: a novel electrocatalyst for highly efficient ethanol oxidation electrocatalysis

Abstract We report rational design and syntheses of ternary noble metal-metalloid-nonmetal alloys nanowires (NWs) as a novel electrocatalyst for electrochemical ethanol oxidation reaction (EOR). This novel electrocatalyst is formed in an aqueous solution via anisotropic nucleation and growth of ternary PdBP alloy NWs along assembled cylinder template of Plurolic F127 on a nitrogen-functionalized graphene support (denoted as PdBP NWs@N-G). We find that uniformly alloying B and P intrinsically modulates the electronic states of Pd catalyst and also introduces new functions into the catalysts, while NW structure supported on the N-G exposes more electrocatalytic active sites and accelerates electron/mass transfers. Such add-in synergies of PdBP NWs@N-G kinetically facilitate the removal and/or further oxidation of CO-based poisoning intermediates, thus remarkably enhancing the electrocatalytic EOR performance. They exhibit a high mass activity of 4.15 A mgPd-1 and superior cycling and chronoamperometric stability for electrocatalytic EOR, much better than previously reported monometallic Pd-based nanocatalysts. More interestingly, this design strategy can be easily extended to develop more sophisticated NWs catalysts with more compositions (for example ternary PdCuBP NWs@N-G) that further tunes the electronic and bifuntional effects for various desired catalysis and electrocatalysis.