Glucose electrooxidation in alkaline medium: Performance enhancement of PdAu/C synthesized by NH3 modified pulse microwave assisted polyol method

•Pd30Au70/C-NH3 with decreased particle size, was prepared by NH3 modified pulse microwave assisted polyol method.•Pd30Au70/C-NH3 exhibits superior activity to Pd30Au70/C for glucose electrooxidation.•Pd30Au70/C-NH3 exhibits a very sensitive amperometric response for glucose molecules.•Pd30Au70/C-NH3 is highly selective to glucose electrooxidation.

Lack of highly efficient and stable electrocatalysts for glucose electrooxidation is a bottleneck for the real application of glucose fuel cells and electrochemical sensors. Herein we report the synthesis of the PdAu/C catalyst by an NH3 modified pulse microwave assisted polyol method, which exhibits excellent glucose electrooxidation performance.Both XRD and TEM results indicate that the modified method can significantly lower the particle size of the Pd, Au and PdAu nanoparticles, which can be attributed to the complexing effect of aqueous NH3 with Pd2+ and Au3+ ions. The as-prepared PdAu/C-NH3 shows excellent catalytic activity and high sensitivity toward glucose electrooxidation and it can be considered very promising for the potential application in the development of both glucose fuel cells and glucose sensors.

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