Ternary Electrocatalysts for Oxidizing Ethanol to Carbon Dioxide: Making Ir Capable of Splitting C-C Bond

Splitting the C-C bond is the main obstacle to electrooxidation of ethanol (EOR) to CO2. We recently demonstrated that the ternary PtRhSnO2 electrocatalyst can accomplish that reaction at room temperature with Rh having a unique capability to split the C-C bond. In this article, we report the finding that Ir can be induced to split the C-C bond as a component of the ternary catalyst. We characterized and compared the properties of several carbon-supported nanoparticle (NP) electrocatalysts comprising a SnO2 NP core decorated with multimetallic nanoislands (MM' = PtIr, PtRh, IrRh, PtIrRh) prepared using a seeded growth approach. An array of characterization techniques were employed to establish the composition and architecture of the synthesized MM'/SnO2 NPs, while electrochemical and in situ infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy studies elucidated trends in activity and the nature of the reaction intermediates and products. Both EOR reactivity and selectivity toward CO2 formation of several of these MM'/SnO2/C electrocatalysts are significantly higher compared to conventional Pt/C and Pt/SnO2/C catalysts. We demonstrate that the PtIr/SnO2/C catalyst with high Ir content shows outstanding catalytic properties with the most negative EOR onset potential and reasonably good selectivity toward ethanol complete oxidation to CO2.