For decades, engineers and scientists have used different techniques to develop nanomaterials that can achieve high electrocatalytic activity to satisfy the energy demand. Recently, nanodroplet-mediated electrodeposition has been a tool used to generate nanomaterials with a promising future providing a high electrocatalytic activity toward different reactions. Conventionally, a metal salt precursor is added to the aqueous nanodroplets and supporting electrolytes into the organic phase to maintain charge balance. Moreover, fundamental studies of ion-transfer have been performed on these systems and have shown that it is only needed supporting electrolyte in the water phase, which reduces the cost of the experiments and drops the partition of certain metal salts, like chloroauric acid, into the organic phase. Here we electrodeposit AuIrPdPtRh high entropy alloys with nanodroplet-mediated electrodeposition by taking advantage of the previous knowledge of ion transfer in this system. A total concentration of 50 mM of the metal’s salts and 0.25 M LiClO4 was added to the water droplets. The water droplets were suspended in 1,2-dichloroethane and the solution was then emulsified by using a horn sonicator. Chronoamperometry was performed to obtain nanoparticles at -1.4 V vs Ag/AgCl on a highly oriented pyrolytic graphite to make sure of the complete electrolysis of the metal salts. Scanning electron microscopy showed the nanoparticle structure while energy dispersive X-ray confirmed the presence of each of the metals and homogeneous distribution. This shows a promising technique that can be used to generate electrocatalysts by including metal salts that usually won’t be able to be maintained in the water droplets.

Electrodeposition of AuIrPdPtRh high entropy alloy nanoparticles via nanodroplet-mediated electrodeposition

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