Improved hydrogen production from formic acid under ambient conditions using a PdAu catalyst on a graphene nanosheets-carbon black support

Formic acid (FA) has great potential as a suitable liquid source for hydrogen and hydrogen storage materials, provided highly active and selective dehydrogenation catalysts under ambient conditions are developed. Here, well-dispersed bimetallic gold-palladium (PdAu) nanoparticles (NPs) grown on graphene nanosheets-carbon black (GNs-CB) composite supports are synthesized via a facile co-reduction method, wherein the GNs-CB composite support proved to be a powerful dispersion agent and a distinct support for the PdAu NPs. Interestingly, the resultant PdAu/GNs-CB catalyst manifests high selectivity and exceedingly high activity to complete the decomposition of FA at room temperature.