PtPdMo Nanosheets with Controllable Synthesis for Enhanced Oxygen Reduction Reactions

Metallic ultrathin nanosheets have drawn increasing attention due to their distinct properties and wide applications. Nonetheless, the successful preparation of metallic ultrathin nanosheets is still a huge challenge because metallic bonds have no direction and tend to form three-dimensional close-packed structures. Here, ultrathin curved PtPdMo nanosheets (UC-PtPdMo NSs) were obtained by controlling the anisotropic growth kinetics through the CO released from Mo(CO)6. Meanwhile, different doses of PVP and CTAB could induce the formation of ultrathin porous PtPdMo NSs (UP-PtPdMo NSs) and ultrathin PtPdMo NSs (U-PtPdMo NSs). Among them, UC-PtPdMo NSs had the optimal catalytic activity for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), and its specific and mass activities were 4.1 and 3.6 times as large as those of Pt/C. Moreover, it showed better stability than the other catalysts after 10k cycles. The strengthened catalytic properties might have resulted from the ultrathin structures and the electronic adjustment of Pt by Pd and Mo elements.