This work was carried out within the framework of the project Combenergy, PID2019-105490RB-C32, financed by the Spanish MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. ICN2 is supported by the Severo Ochoa program from Spanish MCIN / AEI (Grant No.: CEX2021-001214-S). IREC and ICN2 are funded by the CERCA Programme from the Generalitat de Catalunya. Part of the present work has been performed in the frameworks of the Universitat de Barcelona Nanoscience PhD program. ICN2 acknowledges funding from Generalitat de Catalunya 2021SGR00457. This study was supported by MCIN with funding from European Union NextGenerationEU (PRTR-C17.I1) and Generalitat de Catalunya. The authors thank the support from the project NANOGEN (PID2020-116093RB-C43), funded by MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ and by “ERDF A way of making Europe”, by the European Union. The project on which these results are based has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 801342 (Tecniospring INDUSTRY) and the Government of Catalonia's Agency for Business Competitiveness (ACCIÓ). J. Li is grateful for the project supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan (2022NSFSC1229). M.I. acknowledges funding by ISTA and the Werner Siemens Foundation.

The deployment of direct formate fuel cells (DFFCs) relies on the development of active and stable catalysts for the formate oxidation reaction (FOR). Palladium, providing effective full oxidation of formate to CO2, has been widely used as FOR catalyst, but it suffers from low stability, moderate activity, and high cost. Herein, we detail a colloidal synthesis route for the incorporation of P on Pd2Sn nanoparticles. These nanoparticles are dispersed on carbon black and the obtained composite is used as electrocatalytic material for the FOR. The Pd2Sn0.8P-based electrodes present outstanding catalytic activities with record mass current densities up to 10.0 A mgPd-1, well above those of Pd1.6Sn/C reference electrode. These high current densities are further enhanced by increasing the temperature from 25 °C to 40 °C. The Pd2Sn0.8P electrode also allows for slowing down the rapid current decay that generally happens during operation and can be rapidly re-activated through potential cycling. The excellent catalytic performance obtained is rationalized using density functional theory (DFT) calculations.

With funding from the Spanish government through the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2021-001214-S)

Peer reviewed