Revealing the influence of surface structure on the fabrication of Pt-based alloy nanowires induced by H2 and their electrocatalytic upcycling of polyethylene terephthalate

The H 2 -induced attachment of nanoparticles (NPs) to nanowires (NWs) has become a new method for fabricating Pt-based alloy NWs. However, it is still unclear how the surface structure influences the attachment process. Herein, we introduced Ag, Pd and Rh elements into PtIr alloy to fabricate PtIrM (M = Ag, Pd, Rh) materials with similar compositions but different structure, to investigate the effects of changing the surface structures on the morphologies of the products. The results show that both excessive surface oxidation and the strong anchoring ability of Pt atoms are detrimental to the formation of NWs. Based on the special surface structure, the ethylene glycol oxidation reaction (EGOR) was used as a model catalytic reaction to evaluate the catalytic performance of these materials. The Pt 70 Ir 13 Pd 17 NWs deliver a mass activity of 8.93 A mg −1 , a Faradaic efficiency (FE) for glycolic acid of 96 % and the FE is still above 90 % after 50 hours of stability test, outperforming most previously reported electrocatalysts. Finally, in situ experiments and DFT calculations were used to reveal the reaction route of EGOR, where favorable adsorption in the key intermediate promotes activity, high energy barrier for C-C bond cleavage increases selectivity.