Uniform PdCu coated Te nanowires as efficient catalysts for electrooxidation of ethylene glycol

The renewable alcohol oxidation reaction is critical to conversion and storage of clean energy, but the design and construction of highly efficient catalysts for boosting the electrooxidation reaction, remains a grand challenge. Here, we propose a facile approach for the large-scale generation of uniform PdCuTe nanowires (NWs) by using Te NWs as the template. Impressively, as a robust integrated one-dimensional (1D) anode catalyst, the as-obtained PdCuTe NWs shows high specific/mass activity of 7.9 mA cm^-2 and 3872.6 mA mg^-1 for the ethylene glycol (EG) oxidation reaction, being 3.4 and 4.2-fold enhancement than commercial Pd/C, respectively. Moreover, the ternary PdCuTe nanowires also display excellent stability with less activity degradation after long-term electrochemical tests. Combining physicochemical characterizations and electrochemical results, we found that the 1D Te NWs template was significant for promoting the electrocatalytic activity of PdCuTe NWs, because such nanowire template was the key, leading to the attachment of active PdCu nanoparticles which successfully exposed abundant active sites and contributed to large promotion of electrocatalytic performances. This work highlights the utilization efficiency improvement via morphology design for the promotion of electrocatalytic performances.