Enhanced Methanol Electro?Oxidation Activity of Nanoclustered Gold

Size-selected 3 nm gas-phase Au clusters dispersed by cluster beam deposition (CBD) on a conducting fluorine-doped tin oxide template show strong enhancement in mass activity for the methanol electro-oxidation (MEO) reaction compared to previously reported nanostructured gold electrodes. Density functional theory-based modeling corresponding guided experiments attributes this high MEO density of exposed under-coordinated atoms at their faceted surface. In description trends, vertices and edges are most active sites due favorable CO OH adsorption energies. The structures occurring size range, partly preserved upon deposition, may also prevent destructive restructuring during oxidation-reduction cycle. These results highlight benefits using CBD fine-tuning material properties nanoscale designing high-performance fuel cell electrodes with less usage.