Electrochemical Study of the Effect of Adsorbates and Precursors in the Synthesis of Well-Defined Platinum Nanoparticles Using Water-in-Oil Microemulsion

Intensive research has been focused on the study of the production of well-defined structured nanoparticles. This is due to the different properties possessed by these materials according to their size/shape. One of the most studied noble metals is Platinum (Pt) due to its catalytic properties and different methods have been reported to prepared. However, it is of great importance to find easy new ways as well as cost effective and scalable method to synthesize them. In a recent communication [1] we have reported, for the first time, the synthesis of cubic Pt nanoparticles with a very high yield using a water-in-oil (w/o) microemulsion method in which HCl was added in the aqueous phase of the w/o microemulsion. This method, unlike others such as the colloidal method, fulfils these previous requirements. This works pretends to explain the effect on the shape of the nanoparticles of different surface modifiers added in the aqueous phase using also different Pt precursors. In addition, bimetallic nanoparticles have been prepared with similar methodology and the effect of the adsorbates will be evaluated. The nanoparticles have been electrochemically characterised by hydrogen and Ge ads/desorption processes, CO monolayer oxidation and ammonia electro-oxidations have been also studied as test reactions in order to determine the efficiency in the catalytic activity.

References

[1] R. A. Martínez-Rodríguez, F. J. Vidal-Iglesias, J. Solla-Gullón, C. R. Cabrera, J. M. Feliu, Synthesis of Pt Nanoparticles in Water-in-Oil Microemulsion: Effect of HCl on Their Surface Structure, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 136 (2014) 1280.