Trimetallic platinum-nickel-palladium nanorods with abundant bumps as robust catalysts for methanol electrooxidation.

The development of high-performance catalysts is of great importance in direct alcohol fuel cells. One dimensional nanorods catalysts are hopeful candidates as efficient alcohol electrocatalysis. However, it is desirable to precisely modulate the surface morphology of one dimensional nanorods nanocrystals to acquire better catalytic property. We effectively integrate properties of robust one dimensional nanorods, core@shell structure, and ternary nanoalloy into a new PtNiPd@Pt core@shell nanorods with high density bumps on the surface for potential better catalytic behaviors. Notably, those unique structures make the PtNiPd@Pt nanocrystals display favorable electrocatalytic performance towards methanol oxidation reaction. Specifically, the composition-optimized PtNi0.20Pd0.52 nanorods exhibit the highest methanol oxidation reaction specific activity of 18.01 mA cm-2 among PtNiPd@Pt catalysts in alkaline condition. The specific activity is 8.5 times higher than that of Pt/C catalysts. Moreover, electrochemical stability measurements also confirm the better reaction endurance of PtNi0.20Pd0.52 nanorods. Our work provides a reference to well tune the fine surface structure on one dimensional nanorods catalysts in the direction of superior electrocatalytic behaviors.