Controlled Aqueous Solution Synthesis of Platinum-Palladium Alloy Nanodendrites with Various Compositions Using Amphiphilic Triblock Copolymers

In a recent study, we demonstrated that Pluronic F127 triblock copolymer plays a critical role in the formation of dendritic Pt nanostructures (L. Wang, Y. Yamauchi, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2009, 131, 9152-9153). Herein, we expand this concept to produce novel dendritic Pt-Pd alloy nanoparticles. In this paper, a very simple, one-step and efficient route is proposed to directly produce dendritic Pt-Pd alloy nanoparticles with high surface area in high yield, which is carried out simply by stirring an aqueous solution that contains K2PtCl4 and Na2PdCl4 binary precursors in the presence of Pluronic F127 block copolymer and ascorbic acid at room temperature within 30 min without the need for any template, seed-mediated growth, or additive. By simply changing the compositional ratios of the Pt and Pd sources in the precursor solutions, Pt-Pd nanodendrites with various compositions can be easily produced. Because of its unique simplicity, the proposed approach can be considered as a powerful strategy for producing Pt-Pd alloy nanoparticles with unique nanoarchitectures for commercial devices.