Palladium/copper concave nanocube as an oxygen reduction catalyst

The one-pot synthesis of Pd/Cu concave nanocubes (CNCs) with (510) facets as oxygen reduction reaction catalysts has been successfully demonstrated in this work. Based on the same loading weight of metal catalyst and supported by rotating ring-disk electrode measurements, our results showed that the CNC catalysts of small electrochemical surface area (8.57 m2 g−1) had fast kinetics in the mixed-controlled region for 0.1 M NaOH solutions. Also, at 0.9 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode, the specific activity was 0.422 mA cm−2. This is 1.7 times higher than that of commercial Pt/C catalysts (0.248 mA cm−2) with high electrochemical surface area (29.73 m2 g−1).