Crystal phase-based epitaxial growth of hybrid noble metal nanostructures on 4H/fcc Au nanowires

• Main Authors: Lu, Qipeng, Wang, An-Liang, Gong, Yue, Hao, Wei, Cheng, Hongfei, Chen, Junze, Li, Bing, Yang, Nailiang, Niu, Wenxin, Wang, Jie, Yu, Yifu, Zhang, Xiao, Chen, Ye, Fan, Zhanxi, Wu, Xue-Jun, Chen, Jinping, Luo, Jun, Li, Shuzhou, Gu, Lin, Zhang, Hua
• Other Authors: School of Materials Science and Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: Engineering::Materials; Electrocatalysis; Nanowires
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/143855
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Crystal-phase engineering offers opportunities for the rational design and synthesis of noble metal nanomaterials with unusual crystal phases that normally do not exist in bulk materials. However, it remains a challenge to use these materials as seeds to construct heterometallic nanostructures with desired crystal phases and morphologies for promising applications such as catalysis. Here, we report a strategy for the synthesis of binary and ternary hybrid noble metal nanostructures. Our synthesized crystal-phase heterostructured 4H/fcc Au nanowires enable the epitaxial growth of Ru nanorods on the 4H phase and fcc-twin boundary in Au nanowires, resulting in hybrid Au-Ru nanowires. Moreover, the method can be extended to the epitaxial growth of Rh, Ru-Rh and Ru-Pt nanorods on the 4H/fcc Au nanowires to form unique hybrid nanowires. Importantly, the Au-Ru hybrid nanowires with tunable compositions exhibit excellent electrocatalytic performance towards the hydrogen evolution reaction in alkaline media.