RSC Advances Blog

If asked to name a promising element to contribute to highly efficient, clean energy, few chemists would immediately think of lead.

Nevertheless Xiao Zhao and colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Changchun, Jilin, China, have used an alloy of this metal with platinum, which is much better known  for its catalytic properties, to create a more efficient catalyst for the direct electrooxidaton of formic acid, useful for direct formic acid fuel cells (DFAFC). These have the potential to provide clean, efficient energy conversion devices. The group used a self-sacrifice templating method to tune the structure and composition of Pt-Pb catalysts, which show enhanced kinetics due to reduced poisoning by carbon monoxide.

Meanwhile Yuan-Yuan Feng and colleagues, at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, have worked with a more conventional catalyst combination in the form of palladium and gold for the same reaction. They found that controlled deposition of Pd on Au nanoparticles could tune the Pd dispersion and produce higher catalytic activity for the electrooxidation of formic acid. They have also characterised in detail the interaction of Pd with the reactive species.

To find out more, read about the work in RSC Advances for free until the 14th March 2013:

Pt–Pb hollow sphere networks: self-sacrifice-templating method and enhanced activity for formic acid electrooxidation, Xiao Zhao, Jianbing Zhu, Weiwei Cai, Meiling Xiao, Liang Liang, Changpeng Liu and Wei Xing, RSC Adv., 2013, 3, 1763–1767

Catalytic Pd-on-Au nanostructures with improved Pd activity for formic acid electro-oxidation, Yuan-Yuan Feng, Gui-Rong Zhang and Bo-Qing Xu, RSC Adv., 2013, 3, 1748–1752

By Sara Coles