Precise synthesis of monodisperse PdAg nanoparticles for size-dependent electrocatalytic oxidation reactions.

The fabrication of nanomaterials with tunable shape and size has attracted much attention in chemical and physical fields. It is particularly significant to study the effect of catalyst particle size on catalytic performance in the field of catalysis. At present, there are relatively few studies in this field, the main challenge lies in the difficulty of synthesizing catalysts with uniform size. If the particle size of a certain size is not uniform, it is meaningless to compare the catalytic performance with that of other catalysts for size effect. Herein, we successfully synthesized the monodisperse PdAg nanoparticles with three different sizes by changing the type of reducing agents. Among the three catalysts, the PdAg-S NPs (PdAg-Small nanoparticles) with an average size of 3.1 nm exhibited superior electrocatalytic performances of ethylene glycol and glycerol oxidation reactions, which were obviously better than others size PdAg NPs catalysts and commercial Pd/C catalyst. This work revealed the size effect of PdAg nanoparticles in the alcohols electrooxidation and provided a simple method in the design of different sizes of nanocrystals.