Facile synthesis of ternary Ag/C/SnO2 hollow spheres with enhanced activity for hydrazine electro-oxidation
By Wen-Hui Hu and Xiao Shang and Xin-Yu Zhang and Jue Wang and Bin Dong and Xiao Li and Yan-Ru Liu and Guan-Qun Han and Yong-Ming Chai and Chen-Guang Liu
Published in Materials Letters
2016
Abstract
Highly dispersed ternary Ag/C/SnO2 hollow spheres have been synthesized for hydrazine electro-oxidation. The sharp \XRD\ peak of Ag shows that Ag nanoparticles of Ag/C/SnO2 have good crystallinity. \SEM\ shows that Ag/C/SnO2 maintained a good spherical morphology with the diameter of about 300 nm. \TEM\ shows that Ag nanoparticles with the average diameter of about 10 nm disperse well on C/SnO2. The advantages derived from C/SnO2 support including carbon, SnO2 and hollow structures may facilitate the dispersion of Ag and the close interaction of Ag with support. The results of hydrazine electro-oxidation show that C/SnO2 has no activity for hydrazine electro-oxidation while ternary Ag/C/SnO2 exhibits excellent electrocatalytic activity with the negative oxidation peak at ?0.25 V (vs. SCE) and the high peak current of 473 ?A at the scan rate of 20 mV s?1. The enhancement of activity may be attributed to the small size, homogeneous dispersion of Ag and the synergistic effect derived from Ag/C/SnO2 hollow spheres.