CO monolayer oxidation on semi-spherical and preferentially oriented (1 0 0) and (1 1 1) platinum nanoparticles

CO monolayer oxidation on platinum nanoparticles with different shapes (semi-spherical, cubic and tetrahedral-hexagonal nanoparticles) has been studied. We found a very clear dependence between bidimensional (1 1 1) and (1 0 0) ordered domains present on the surface of the nanoparticles and their CO electrocatalytic activity. The results reported in this work demonstrate the importance of controlling the intrinsic structural properties of the Pt nanoparticles, in terms of number and nature of the surface active sites, to understand their electrocatalytic properties. Thus, adsorbed CO oxidation has been revealed as an extremely structure sensitive reaction useful to establish correlations with the surface properties of platinum nanoparticles.