Facile Direct Seed-Mediated Growth of AuPt Bimetallic Shell on the Surface of Pd Nanocubes and Application for Direct H2O2 Synthesis

The selective enhancement of catalytic activity is a challenging task, as catalyst modification is generally accompanied by both desirable and undesirable properties. For example, in the case of the direct synthesis of hydrogen peroxide, Pt on Pd improves hydrogen conversion, but lowers hydrogen peroxide selectivity, whereas Au on Pd enhances hydrogen peroxide selectivity but decreases hydrogen conversion. Toward an ideal catalytic property, the development of a catalyst that is capable of improving H-H dissociation for increasing H2 conversion, whilst suppressing O-O dissociation for high H2O2 selectivity would be highly beneficial. Pd-core AuPt-bimetallic shell nanoparticles with a nano-sized bimetallic layer composed of Au-rich or Pt-rich content with Pd cubes were readily prepared via the direct seed-mediated growth method. In the Pd-core AuPt-bimetallic shell nanoparticles, Au was predominantly located on the {100} facets of the Pd nanocubes, whereas Pt was deposited on the corners of the Pd nanocubes. The evaluation of Pd-core AuPt-bimetallic shell nanoparticles with varying Au and Pt contents revealed that Pd-core AuPt-bimetallic shell that was composed of 2.5 mol% Au and 5 mol% Pt, in relation to Pd, exhibited the highest H2O2 production rate (914 mmol H2O2 gmetal&minus
1 h&minus
1), due to the improvement of both H2O2 selectivity and H2 conversion.