Platinum-based nanocages with subnanometer-thick walls and well-defined, controllable facets

Lei Zhang, Luke T. Roling, Xue Wang, Madeline Vara, Miaofang Chi, Jingyue Liu, Sang Il Choi, Jinho Park, Jeffrey A. Herron, Zhaoxiong Xie, Manos Mavrikakis, Younan Xia

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

885 Scopus citations

Abstract

A cost-effective catalyst should have a high dispersion of the active atoms, together with a controllable surface structure for the optimization of activity, selectivity, or both. We fabricated nanocages by depositing a few atomic layers of platinum (Pt) as conformal shells on palladium (Pd) nanocrystals with well-defined facets and then etching away the Pd templates. Density functional theory calculations suggest that the etching is initiated via a mechanism that involves the formation of vacancies through the removal of Pd atoms incorporated into the outermost layer during the deposition of Pt. With the use of Pd nanoscale cubes and octahedra as templates, we obtained Pt cubic and octahedral nanocages enclosed by {100} and {111} facets, respectively, which exhibited distinctive catalytic activities toward oxygen reduction.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)412-416
Number of pages5
JournalScience
Volume349
Issue number6246
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 24 2015

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