Nucleation-mediated synthesis and enhanced catalytic properties of Au-Pd bimetallic tripods and bipyramids with twinned structures and high-energy facets

The Au-Pd alloy has been proved to be an excellent catalyst in many applications, such as the electro-oxidation of formic acid, CO oxidation and oxidation of alcohols to aldehydes. However, most of the research has been focused on the shape-controlled Au-Pd alloy NCs with a single-crystal structure. Due to the existence of high-energy atoms on the twin defects, twinned structures usually will further increase their catalytic activities. It is necessary to develop a method to prepare the Au-Pd alloy with twinned structures and investigate their catalytic properties. Herein, we successfully synthesized Au-Pd alloy tripods and bipyramids with twinned structures by the cooperation of cetyltrimethyl ammonium chloride (CTAC) and cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB). The tripods contain one twin plane, while the bipyramids consist of a fivefold-twinned structure. In addition, the tripods and bipyramids are both exposed by high-energy facets. We proposed that the tripods and bipyramids are evolved from bipyramid seeds and fivefold twinned seeds, respectively. The as-prepared Au-Pd tripods and bipyramids performed better activity for electrocatalytic oxidation of formic acid compared to the cubic Au-Pd nanoparticles.