Enhanced Methanol Electro‐Oxidation Activity of Nanoclustered Gold

Abstract

Size‐selected 3 nm gas‐phase Au clusters dispersed by cluster beam deposition (CBD) on a conducting fluorine‐doped tin oxide template show strong enhancement in mass activity for the methanol electro‐oxidation (MEO) reaction compared to previously reported nanostructured gold electrodes. Density functional theory‐based modeling on the corresponding Au clusters guided by experiments attributes this high MEO activity to the high density of exposed under‐coordinated Au atoms at their faceted surface. In the description of the activity trends, vertices and edges are the most active sites due to their favorable CO and OH adsorption energies. The faceted structures occurring in this size range, partly preserved upon deposition, may also prevent destructive restructuring during the oxidation‐reduction cycle. These results highlight the benefits of using CBD in fine‐tuning material properties on the nanoscale and designing high‐performance fuel cell electrodes with less material usage.

C2product formation in the CO2electroreduction on boron-doped graphene anchored copper clusters

“…This procedure models the typical experimental synthesis process of cluster beam deposition. 75 The optimized geometrical structures of the free gas phase and the BDG nanoflake anchored Cu n ( n = 1–8) clusters with the natural charge of each Cu atom are depicted in Fig. 3.…”

Self-Supported Defect-Rich Au-Based Nanostructures as Robust Bifunctional Catalysts for the Methanol Oxidation Reaction and Oxygen Reduction Reaction in an Alkaline Medium

“…Hence, the research and development of bifunctional catalysts in an alkaline medium for MOR and ORR is of great importance. As a potential candidate, Au-based catalysts have the advantages of more natural reserves and higher conductivity than Pt, but the intrinsic activity is very poor, which needs to be strengthened by a variety of methods [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ]. For example, one important strategy is the fabrication of gold structures with abundant defects and highly active low-coordinated atoms, such as steps and kinks, which could serve as excellent catalytic sites for MOR and ORR [ 14 , 16 ].…”

“…As a potential candidate, Au-based catalysts have the advantages of more natural reserves and higher conductivity than Pt, but the intrinsic activity is very poor, which needs to be strengthened by a variety of methods [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ]. For example, one important strategy is the fabrication of gold structures with abundant defects and highly active low-coordinated atoms, such as steps and kinks, which could serve as excellent catalytic sites for MOR and ORR [ 14 , 16 ]. In addition, the morphology and electronic structure of Au-based catalysts can be further controlled by introducing a second and third transition metal to synthesize Au-based alloys, thus enhancing the electrocatalytic MOR and ORR activity of Au [ 15 , 17 ].…”

Highly Selective Mixed Potential Methanol Gas Sensor Based on a Ce0.8Gd0.2O1.95 Solid Electrolyte and Au Sensing Electrode

“…In the last few years, it has been used for the electro-oxidation of alcohols by many researchers. Yadav et al designed a new type of methanol electro-oxidation catalyst based on highly dispersed 3 nm zero-valent deposited Au clusters using the cluster deposition method . Zhang et al prepared the nanoporous gold with high catalytic activity for the ethanol electro-oxidation reaction by solid-phase reaction .…”

“…Yadav et al designed a new type of methanol electro-oxidation catalyst based on highly dispersed 3 nm zero-valent deposited Au clusters using the cluster deposition method. 16 Zhang et al prepared the nanoporous gold with high catalytic activity for the ethanol electro-oxidation reaction by solid-phase reaction. 15 It can be seen that Au has attracted considerable attention.…”