Additive-free fabrication of spherical hollow palladium/copper alloyed nanostructures for fuel cell application

Herein, through tuning the surface energy difference of the major crystal planes by alloying, hollow palladium/copper alloyed nanostructures are successfully prepared through a one-pot template-free strategy. Compared with the solid PdCu alloyed nanoparticles, the hollow PdCu alloyed nanostructures exhibit the increased accessible electrochemical active surface area and the enhanced electrocatalytic activity for formic acid oxidation. It is concluded that the as-prepared hollow PdCu alloyed nanostructures would be a potential candidate as an anode electrocatalyst in direct formic acid fuel cell. More importantly, the strategy developed in this study might be expanded to fabricate other metal alloyed hollow nanostructures.