The water electrolysis is of critical importance for sustainable hydrogen production. In this work, a highly efficient and stable PdCo alloy catalyst (PdCo@CN) was synthesized by direct annealing of Pd-doped metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) under N2 atmosphere. In 0.5 M H2SO4 solution, PdCo@CN displays remarkable electrocatalytic performance with overpotential of 80 mV, a Tafel slope of 31 mV dec(-1), and excellent stability of 10 000 cycles. Our studies reveal that noble metal doped MOFs are ideal precursors for preparing highly active alloy electrocatalysts with low content of noble metal.

A facile two-step synthesis method has been developed for the synthesis of highly active and well-defined Pt-Pd nanoalloys supported on the surface of Fe3O4@C colloidal nanoparticles. The nanoalloys were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) with line scanning of energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The nanoalloys exhibit remarkable catalytic activity toward reduction of 4-nitrophenol to 4-aminophenol by NaBH4. Furthermore, the catalytic activity of the supported nanoalloys could be further optimized by tuning the composition of the supported nanoalloys, and the optimized catalytic activity is obtained with a normalized rate constant of about 12.03 nmol(-1) s(-1) when the atomic ratio of Pd to Pt is tuned to 2.07:1, which is advancing among the Pd-based nanocatalysts reported in the recent years.

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