title: A facile approach to prepare silicon-based Pt-Ag tubular dendritic nano-forests (tDNFs) for solar-light-enhanced methanol oxidation reaction.
abstract: In this paper, a facile two-step Galvanic replacement reaction (GRR) is proposed to prepare Pt-Ag tubular dendritic nano-forests (tDNFs) in ambient condition for enhancing methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) under solar illumination. In the first GRR, a homogeneous layer of silver dendritic nano-forests (DNFs) with 10 μm in thickness was grown on Si wafer in 5 min in silver nitride (AgNO3) and buffer oxide etchant (BOE) solution. In the second GRR, we utilized chloroplatinic acid (H2PtCl6) as the precursor for platinum (Pt) deposition to further transform the prepared Ag DNFs into Pt-Ag tDNFs. The catalytic performance and solar response of the Pt-Ag tDNFs toward methanol electro-oxidation are also studied by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and chronoamperometry (CA). The methanol oxidation current was boosted by 6.4% under solar illumination on the Pt-Ag tDNFs due to the induced localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) on the dendritic structure. Current results provide a cost-effective and facile approach to prepare solar-driven metallic electrodes potentially applicable to photo-electro-chemical fuel cells.
authors: Instrument Technology Research Center, National Applied Research Laboratories, Hsinchu, 300 Taiwan ; Department of Engineering and System Science, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, 300 Taiwan.
authors: Chun-Ting
authors: CT
authors: Lin
authors: Instrument Technology Research Center, National Applied Research Laboratories, Hsinchu, 300 Taiwan.
authors: Ming-Hua
authors: MH
authors: Shiao
authors: Department of Physics, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, 402 Taiwan ; Institute of Nanoscience, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, 402 Taiwan.
authors: Mao-Nan
authors: MN
authors: Chang
authors: Instrument Technology Research Center, National Applied Research Laboratories, Hsinchu, 300 Taiwan.
authors: Nancy
authors: N
authors: Chu
authors: Department of Physics, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, 402 Taiwan.
authors: Yu-Wei
authors: YW
authors: Chen
authors: Department of Engineering and System Science, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, 300 Taiwan.
authors: Yu-Hsuan
authors: YH
authors: Peng
authors: Instrument Technology Research Center, National Applied Research Laboratories, Hsinchu, 300 Taiwan.
authors: Bo-Huei
authors: BH
authors: Liao
authors: Instrument Technology Research Center, National Applied Research Laboratories, Hsinchu, 300 Taiwan.
authors: Hung Ji
authors: HJ
authors: Huang
authors: Instrument Technology Research Center, National Applied Research Laboratories, Hsinchu, 300 Taiwan.
authors: Chien-Nan
authors: CN
authors: Hsiao
authors: Department of Engineering and System Science, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, 300 Taiwan ; Division of Mechanics, Research Center for Applied Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei, 115 Taiwan.
authors: Fan-Gang
authors: FG
authors: Tseng
keywords: Direct methanol fuel cell; Galvanic replacement reaction; Tubular dendritic nano-forests