Effect of thermal treatment of Pd decorated Fe/C nanocatalysts on their catalytic performance for formic acid oxidation.

The thermal treatment of bimetallic nanocatalysts plays an important role in determining their catalytic performance. Here tuning the surface oxidized metal species of bimetallic Pd-Fe electrocatalysts for the formic acid (FA) oxidation reaction is reported and a correlation between the surface oxidized metal species of the Pd-Fe nanoparticles and their catalytic activities is proposed. The structural details of the Pd-Fe/C catalysts are characterized by X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and high-sensitivity low-energy ion scattering (HS-LEIS).