Issue 12, 2011

A density functional theory approach to mushroom-like platinum clusters on palladium-shell over Au core nanoparticles for high electrocatalytic activity

Abstract

Recently, it was found that Pt clusters deposited on Pd shell over Au core nanoparticles (Au@Pd@Pt NPs) exhibit unusually high electrocatalytic activity for the electro-oxidation of formic acid (P. P. Fang, S. Duan, et al., Chem. Sci., 2011, 2, 531–539). In an attempt to offer an explanation, we used here carbon monoxide (CO) as probed molecules, and applied density functional theory (DFT) to simulate the surface Raman spectra of CO at this core-shell-cluster NPs with a two monolayer thickness of Pd shell and various Pt cluster coverage. Our DFT results show that the calculated Pt coverage dependent spectra fit the experimental ones well only if the Pt clusters adopt a mushroom-like structure, while currently the island-like structure is the widely accepted model, which follows the Volmer–Weber growth mode. This result infers that there should be a new growth mode, i.e., the mushroom growth mode as proposed in the present work, for Au@Pd@Pt NPs. We suggest that such a mushroom-like structure may offer novel active sites, which accounts for the observed high electrocatalytic activity of Au@Pd@Pt NPs.

Graphical abstract: A density functional theory approach to mushroom-like platinum clusters on palladium-shell over Au core nanoparticles for high electrocatalytic activity

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
11 Jan 2011
Accepted
15 Feb 2011
First published
24 Feb 2011

Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2011,13, 5441-5449

A density functional theory approach to mushroom-like platinum clusters on palladium-shell over Au core nanoparticles for high electrocatalytic activity

S. Duan, P. Fang, F. Fan, I. Broadwell, F. Yang, D. Wu, B. Ren, C. Amatore, Y. Luo, X. Xu and Z. Tian, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2011, 13, 5441 DOI: 10.1039/C1CP20096H

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements