Highly enhanced electrocatalytic oxygen reduction performance observed in bimetallic palladium-based nanowires prepared under ambient, surfactantless conditions.

We have employed an ambient, template-based technique that is simple, efficient, and surfactantless to generate a series of bimetallic Pd(1-x)Au(x) and Pd(1-x)Pt(x) nanowires with control over composition and size. Our as-prepared nanowires maintain significantly enhanced activity toward oxygen reduction as compared with commercial Pt nanoparticles and other 1D nanostructures, as a result of their homogeneous alloyed structure. Specifically, Pd(9)Au and Pd(4)Pt nanowires possess oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) activities of 0.49 and 0.79 mA/cm(2), respectively, which are larger than the analogous value for commercial Pt nanoparticles (0.21 mA/cm(2)). In addition, core-shell Pt~Pd(9)Au nanowires have been prepared by electrodepositing a Pt monolayer shell and the corresponding specific, platinum mass, and platinum group metal mass activities were found to be 0.95 mA/cm(2), 2.08 A/mg(Pt), and 0.16 A/mg(PGM), respectively. The increased activity and catalytic performance is accompanied by improved durability toward ORR.