Engineering Heterostructured Pd-Bi 2 Te 3 Doughnut/Pd Hollow Nanospheres for Ethylene Glycol Electrooxidation.

The electrooxidation of ethylene glycol (EG) is of vital significance for the conversion from biomass energy into electrical energy via direct fuel cells. However, the EG oxidation reaction (EGOR) suffers from poor efficiency due to the limitation of high-performance electrocatalysts for cleaving the C-C bonds. Herein, this limitation is successfully addressed by fabricating the doughnut-shaped Pd-Bi 2 Te 3 heterostructured catalyst. Notably, the heterojunction Pd-Bi 2 Te 3 nanocatalyst has been demonstrated to be highly active toward the EGOR with superb activity and durability, in which a mass activity as high as 2420.8 mA mg -1 is achieved in alkaline media, being 1.7 times higher than that of the commercial Pd/C catalyst. Upon combination of experimental results with mechanism studies, it is indicated that the remarkable EGOR performance is attributed to the enlarged active areas that stemmed from the doughnut-like structure, as well as the strong synergistic effect from Pd-Bi 2 Te 3 and Pd. More importantly, the highly electroactive Pd-Bi 2 Te 3 can accelerate charge transfer and boost the oxidation of CO-like intermediates, which are conducive to the enhancement in electrochemical stability.