Great efforts have been devoted to the exploration of PdCu-based catalysts toward formic acid oxidation, but their activity is still much lower than that expected. In this work, nanotwin-rich PdCuW trimetallic nanochains were successfully fabricated using a modified polyol method. The formation of crystalline defect of nanotwins should be related to the significant lattice mismatch among Pd, Cu, and the introduced W. It is discovered that the nanotwins could function as superb active sites to highly improve the peak current density of formic acid oxidation. In addition, the W- and Cu-tailored PdCuW nanochains optimize the electronic structure of Pd with suitable binding energy to reduce the charge-transfer resistance, resulting in greatly enhanced catalytic activity. This work highlights the beauty of the architecture with introduced W to significantly enhance catalytic performance in particular the activity of formic acid electrooxidation.

人们一直在努力开发基于PdCu的甲酸氧化催化剂，但其活性仍远低于预期。在这项工作中，使用改进的多元醇方法成功地制备了富含纳米孪晶的PdCuW三金属纳米链。纳米孪晶的晶体缺陷的形成应与Pd，Cu和引入的W之间明显的晶格失配有关。发现纳米孪晶可以充当极好的活性位点，以高度提高甲酸氧化的峰值电流密度。此外，W和Cu定制的PdCuW纳米链以合适的结合能优化了Pd的电子结构，从而降低了电荷转移阻力，从而大大提高了催化活性。