Division of Nanomaterials and Chemistry, Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, Hefei Science Center of CAS, CAS Key Laboratory of Mechanical Behavior and Design of Materials, Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China.
Adv Mater. 2019 Sep;31(38):e1803503. doi: 10.1002/adma.201803503. Epub 2019 Jan 15.
The past decade has witnessed great progress in the synthesis and electrocatalytic applications of 1D hollow alloy nanotubes with controllable compositions and fine structures. Hollow nanotubes have been explored as promising electrocatalysts in the fuel cell reactions due to their well-controlled surface structure, size, porosity, and compositions. In addition, owing to the self-supporting ability of 1D structure, hollow nanotubes are capable of avoiding catalyst aggregation and carbon corrosion during the catalytic process, which are two other issues for the widely investigated carbon-supported nanoparticle catalysts. It is currently a great challenge to achieve high activity and stability at a relatively low cost to realize commercialization of these catalysts. An overview of the structural and compositional properties of 1D hollow alloy nanotubes, which provide a large number of accessible active sites, void spaces for electrolytes/reactants impregnation, and structural stability for suppressing aggregation, is presented. The latest advances on several strategies such as hard template and self-templating methods for controllable synthesis of hollow alloyed nanotubes with controllable structures and compositions are then summarized. Benefiting from the advantages of the unique properties and facile synthesis approaches, the capability of 1D hollow nanotubes is then highlighted by discussing examples of their applications in fuel-cell-related electrocatalysis. Finally, the remaining challenges and potential solutions in the field are summarized to provide some useful clues for the future development of 1D hollow alloy nanotube materials.
过去十年见证了具有可控组成和精细结构的一维空心合金纳米管的合成和电催化应用的巨大进展。由于其表面结构、尺寸、孔隙率和组成得到了很好的控制，空心纳米管被探索为燃料电池反应中很有前途的电催化剂。此外，由于一维结构的自支撑能力，空心纳米管能够在催化过程中避免催化剂聚集和碳腐蚀，这是另两个广泛研究的碳载纳米颗粒催化剂所面临的问题。目前，面临的一个巨大挑战是在相对较低的成本下实现高活性和稳定性，以实现这些催化剂的商业化。本文综述了一维空心合金纳米管的结构和组成特性，这些特性提供了大量可接触的活性位点、电解质/反应物浸渍的空隙空间以及抑制聚集的结构稳定性。然后总结了几种策略的最新进展，如硬模板和自模板方法，用于可控合成具有可控结构和组成的空心合金纳米管。受益于独特性质和简便合成方法的优势，然后通过讨论其在燃料电池相关电催化中的应用实例，突出了一维空心纳米管的性能。最后，总结了该领域中存在的挑战和潜在的解决方案，为一维空心合金纳米管材料的未来发展提供了一些有用的线索。
