Bimetallic nanoalloys, composed of noble metals and transition metals, have drawn great interest in the field of catalysis. By alloying noble metals with non-noble transition metals, the catalytic performance can be enhanced due to the synergistic effect,<sup> </sup>and meanwhile the cost of materials can be reduced. The Ru, one kind of noble metals, has high catalytic activity in selective hydrogenation, CO oxidation, etc., but its application is limited by the high cost. Although bulk Ru is immiscible with Cu, the nanosized Ru can form solid solution with Cu over a wide range. Fine composition and morphology control of the nanostructured bimetallic catalysts is important for achieving optimal catalytic performance. Herein, a facile one-pot wet chemical method is developed for the synthesis of a heterostructured RuCu nanoalloy, which shows a hollow tube structure with dendrites uniformly grown on the periphery. Molar ratio of Ru to Cu can be tuned by changing the reaction time and the molar ratio of precursors, which will affect the morphology of the tubular structure. Furthermore, Cu can be etched out from the RuCu alloy without changing the morphology, generating Ru nanotubes. Time-evolution experiments indicate that, first Cu nanowires are formed, and then Ru is reduced by Cu through the galvanic replacement reaction. Control experiment shows that Cu precursor cannot be reduced without the presence of Ru precursor, suggesting that this is a noble metal-induced reduction. This structure has very high specific surface area, thus it has great potential for catalysis. Preliminary study on the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) under alkaline condition shows that the as-synthesized RuCu nanotubes have superior performance compared with the commercial Ru/C catalyst, indicating their great potential in HER.

One-pot synthesis of heterostructured RuCu alloyed nanotubes

255th National Meeting (2018)

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