Sacrificial template-assisted fabrication of palladium hollow nanocubes and their application in electrochemical detection toward hydrogen peroxide

Pure Pd hollow nanocubes assembled with uniform nanoparticles were successfully fabricated via a one-step redox reaction by using Cu2O nanocubes as both sacrificial templates and the reducing agents. Almost no residual Cu2O cores remained in the final Pd cubic nanoshells which were composed of nanograins with an average diameter of approximately 6.5 nm. A wide liner range (0.1–24.0 mM), a relatively high sensitivity (287.7 mA M−1 cm−2) and a comparable detection limit (7.4 μM, S/N = 3) were observed in the electrochemical experiments, indicating that the obtained Pd hollow nanocubes as enzyme-free catalysts possessed excellent electrocatalytic activity to the reduction of H2O2.