Fabrication of monometallic (Co, Pd, Pt, Au) and bimetallic (Pt/Au, Au/Pt) thin films with hierarchical architectures as electrocatalysts

Co thin films with novel hierarchical structures were controllably fabricated by simple electrochemical deposition in the absence of hard and soft templates, which were used as sacrificial templates to further prepare noble metal (Pd, Pt, Au) hierarchical micro/nanostructures via metal exchange reactions. SEM characterization demonstrated that the resulting noble metal thin films displayed hierarchical architectures. The as-prepared noble metal thin films could be directly used as the anode catalysts for the electro-oxidation of formic acid. Moreover, bimetallic catalysts (Pt/Au, Au/Pt) fabricated based on the monometallic Au, Pt micro/nanostructures exhibited the higher catalytic activity compared to the previous monometallic catalysts. (C) 2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.