Electrochemical supermolecular templating of mesoporous Rh films

Authors

Kenya Kani, University of WollongongFollow
Jeonghun Kim, University of Queensland, Qingdao University of Science and TechnologyFollow
Bo Jiang, National Institute for Materials Science
Md. Shahriar Al Hossain, University of QueenslandFollow
Yoshio Bando, University of Wollongong, National Institute for Materials Science, University of QueenslandFollow
Joel Henzie, National Institute for Materials Science
Yusuke Yamauchi, Qingdao University of Science And Technology, University of Queensland, Kyung Hee UniversityFollow

RIS ID

136514

Publication Details

Kani, K., Kim, J., Jiang, B., Hossain, M. A., Bando, Y., Henzie, J. & Yamauchi, Y. (2019). Electrochemical supermolecular templating of mesoporous Rh films. Nanoscale, 11 (22), 10581-10588.

Abstract

Making mesoporous rhodium (Rh) with traditional soft-templating methods is challenging because Rh has a high surface energy compared to other metals. Here, we report a synthetic concept to generate mesoporous Rh films (MRFs) by electrochemical co-deposition of Rh precursors and block copolymer micelles. We investigate the effect of deposition potentials and pH on the resulting mesoporous structures. Controlled electrodeposition enables us to conformally coat the entire surface of the electrode with a homogeneous mesoporous Rh film with any arbitrary thickness up to ∼840 nm. The average pore size of the MRF is ∼14 nm, with an average wall thickness of ∼9.5 nm. Since the MRFs are directly deposited on conducting substrates, they can be used as porous electrodes for various important electrocatalytic reactions. We examine the performance of these MRFs for the electrochemical methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) and find that they have a mass-normalized peak current density ∼4 times higher than a commercial Rh black (RhB) catalyst.

Grant Number

ARC/FT150100479