title: Surface composition tuning of Au-Pt bimetallic nanoparticles for enhanced carbon monoxide and methanol electro-oxidation.
abstract: The ability to direct bimetallic nanoparticles to express desirable surface composition is a crucial step toward effective heterogeneous catalysis, sensing, and bionanotechnology applications. Here we report surface composition tuning of bimetallic Au-Pt electrocatalysts for carbon monoxide and methanol oxidation reactions. We establish a direct correlation between the surface composition of Au-Pt nanoparticles and their catalytic activities. We find that the intrinsic activities of Au-Pt nanoparticles with the same bulk composition of Au0.5Pt0.5 can be enhanced by orders of magnitude by simply controlling the surface composition. We attribute this enhancement to the weakened CO binding on Pt in discrete Pt or Pt-rich clusters surrounded by surface Au atoms. Our finding demonstrates the importance of surface composition control at the nanoscale in harnessing the true electrocatalytic potential of bimetallic nanoparticles and opens up strategies for the development of highly active bimetallic nanoparticles for electrochemical energy conversion.
authors: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
authors: Jin
authors: J
authors: Suntivich
authors: Zhichuan
authors: Z
authors: Xu
authors: Christopher E
authors: CE
authors: Carlton
authors: Junhyung
authors: J
authors: Kim
authors: Binghong
authors: B
authors: Han
authors: Seung Woo
authors: SW
authors: Lee
authors: Nicéphore
authors: N
authors: Bonnet
authors: Nicola
authors: N
authors: Marzari
authors: Lawrence F
authors: LF
authors: Allard
authors: Hubert A
authors: HA
authors: Gasteiger
authors: Kimberly
authors: K
authors: Hamad-Schifferli
authors: Yang
authors: Y
authors: Shao-Horn
mesh_terms: D002248:Carbon Monoxide / Q000737:chemistry*; D004563:Electrochemistry; D006046:Gold / Q000737:chemistry*; D053768:Metal Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry*; D000432:Methanol / Q000737:chemistry*; D008855:Microscopy, Electron, Scanning; D046529:Microscopy, Electron, Transmission; D010084:Oxidation-Reduction; D010984:Platinum / Q000737:chemistry*; D013499:Surface Properties
chemical_list: D010984:Platinum; D006046:Gold; D002248:Carbon Monoxide; D000432:Methanol