Efficient electrocatalytic formic acid oxidation over PdAu-manganese oxide/carbon

Abstract Developing high efficient Palladium-metal-based electrocatalysts is of great significance for formic acid oxidation (FAO) reaction. Here, we experimentally synthesize PdAu alloy composited with MnOx electrocatalyst (PdAu-MnOx/C) and illustrate its remarkable FAO performance. By virtue of theory studies, we find that Pd-Au bridges have superior adsorption ability towards HCOO* and oxygen vacancies in MnOx make HCOO* formation from HCOOH easier, synergistically lead to the outstanding FAO performance with specific activity and mass activity of 19.0 mA cm−2 and 4539 mA mg−1Pd+Au respectively, which are 2.6 times and 3.5 times higher than commercial Pd/C. This work shed some light toward development of high-performance Pd-based electrocatalysts for FAO.