Charge transfer effects on the chemical reactivity of PdxCu1−xnanoalloys

This work reports on the synthesis and characterization of PdxCu1-x (x = 0.7, 0.5 and 0.3) nanoalloys obtained via an eco-friendly chemical reduction method based on ascorbic acid and trisodium citrate. The average size of the quasi-spherical nanoparticles (NPs) obtained by this method was about 4 nm, as observed by TEM. The colloids containing different NPs were then supported on carbon in order to produce powder samples (PdxCu1-x/C) whose electronic and structural properties were probed by different techniques. XRD analysis indicated the formation of crystalline PdCu alloys with a nanoscaled crystallite size. Core-level XPS results provided a fingerprint of a charge transfer process betwe…