Facile ultrafine copper seed-mediated approach for fabricating quasi-two-dimensional palladium-copper bimetallic trigonal hierarchical nanoframes

Anisotropic Pd nanoparticles with highly branched morphologies are urgently needed as building blocks for nanoscale devices, catalysts, and sensing materials owing to their novel structures and unique physicochemical properties. However, realizing size control and branch manipulation for these materials is very challenging. In this study, we develop a facile ultrafine Cu seed-mediated approach in the aqueous phase to produce novel Pd–Cu trigonal hierarchical nanoframes (THNFs). The main branch of most of the obtained nanocrystals is tripod-like, with advanced branches along the arms as frame units having self-similarity. In this method, the size of the Pd–Cu THNFs can be flexibly controlled by manipulating the nucleation involving the sub-3 nm Cu seeds. These Pd–Cu THNFs outperform Pd black with regard to their ethanol-oxidation performance, having a specific activity and mass activity 9.7 and 6.6 times higher, respectively. This research provides a versatile ultrafine seed-mediated approach for producing size-controlled anisotropic bimetallic nanoframes.