Relevance of the nature of bimetallic PtAu nanoparticles as electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction in the presence of methanol

Pt–Au/C cathode with enhanced oxygen-reduction activity in PEFCs

“…Pt reduces oxygen to water either through a 2-electron or a 4-electron process (Paulus et al 2001). Amelioration of ORR on Pt surfaces in presence of Au has been reported recently (Elhsissen et al 1999;Devarajan et al 2005;Luo et al 2005;Njoki et al 2005;Qian et al 2006;Hernandez-Fernandez et al 2008;Wang et al 2008Wang et al , 2009Liu et al 2009a, b;Ma et al 2010). However, the Au used in these studies is either used as a matrix to disperse the Pt sites or not as alloy particles.…”

“…The guidelines for designing bimetallic catalysts suggest that one of the metals in the bimetal catalyst should facilitate the splitting of O=O bond while the other should help reduce the adsorbed atomic-oxygen (Luo et al 2006). In this context, the combination of Pt and Au has been found to be superior to pristine Pt towards ORR (Elhsissen et al 1999;Devarajan et al 2005;Luo et al 2005;Njoki et al 2005;Qian et al 2006;Hernandez-Fernandez et al 2008;Wang et al 2008Wang et al , 2009Liu et al 2009a, b;Ma et al 2010). In view of the unique properties of nano-sized gold (Haruta 2005;Hughes et al 2005;Luo et al 2006) and the high catalytic-activity of Pt, bimetallic Pt-Au nanoparticles of optimum composition are highly likely to serve as synergistic catalysts.…”

Temperature dependence of CO desorption kinetics at a novel Pt-on-Au/C PEM fuel cell anode

“…Recently, density functional theory calculations have identified the Pt-Au-based systems as potential candidates for the hydrogen evolution reaction [23,24]. A high catalytic activity of the Pt-Au-based systems, even higher than that of pure Pt, has been reported for some specific catalytic reactions such as hexane conversion [25], ethylene glycol oxidation [26], methanol oxidation [27][28][29][30][31][32] and formic acid oxidation [32][33][34][35]. The increase in catalytic activity of the Pt-modified Au nanoparticles has been explained by the utilisation enhancement of Pt in these electrocatalysts and a possible enhancement effect of Au atoms [27,22,35].…”

Preparation and characterization of carbon-supported Pt–Au cathode catalysts for oxygen reduction reaction

“…Recently, Au, among various transition metals, has been alloyed with Pt and its ORR activity has been widely explored [11,[15][16][17][18][19].…”

“…In the presence of methanol, the PtAu/C catalyst with high ORR activity could be due to a partial dilution of the Pt sites and the predominance of Pt(1 1 0) on the actual alloyed samples [15]. It has been reported that the ORR activities for the Pt-Au electrocatalysts are influenced by several factors, including the preparation methods, the compositions of alloy nanoparticles, and the calcination conditions [16,19].…”