Correction: Engineering the morphology of palladium nanostructures to tune their electrocatalytic activity in formic acid oxidation reactions.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1039/D0NA00798F.].

Engineering the morphology of palladium nanostructures to tune their electrocatalytic activity in formic acid oxidation reactions.

Pd nanomaterials can be cheaper alternative catalysts for the electrocatalytic formic acid oxidation reaction (FAOR) in fuel cells. The size and shape of the nanoparticles and crystal engineering can play a crucial role in enhancing the catalytic activities of Pd nanostructures. A systematic study on the effect of varying the morphology of Pd nanostructures on their catalytic activities for FAOR is reported here. Palladium nanoparticles (Pd0D), nanowires (Pd1D) and nanosheets (Pd2D) could be synthesized by using swollen liquid crystals as 'soft' templates. Swollen liquid crystals are lyotropic liquid crystals that are formed from a quaternary mixture of a surfactant, cosurfactant, brine and Pd salt dissolved in oil. Pd1D nanostructures exhibited 2.7 and 19 fold higher current density than Pd0D and Pd2D nanostructures in the FAOR. The Pd1D nanostructure possess higher electrochemically active surface area (ECSA), better catalytic activity, stability, and lower impedance to charge transfer when compared to the Pd0D and Pd2D nanostructures. The presence of relatively higher amounts of crystal defects and enriched (100) crystal facets in the Pd1D nanostructure were found to be the reasons for their enhanced catalytic activities.

Patterning highly ordered arrays of complex nanofeatures through EUV directed polarity switching of non chemically amplified photoresist.

Given the importance of complex nanofeatures in the filed of micro-/nanoelectronics particularly in the area of high-density magnetic recording, photonic crystals, information storage, micro-lens arrays, tissue engineering and catalysis, the present work demonstrates the development of new methodology for patterning complex nanofeatures using a recently developed non-chemically amplified photoresist (n-CARs) poly(4-(methacryloyloxy)phenyl)dimethylsulfoniumtriflate) (polyMAPDST) with the help of extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) as patterning tool. The photosensitivity of polyMAPDST is mainly due to the presence of radiation sensitive trifluoromethanesulfonate unit (triflate group) which undergoes photodegradation upon exposure with EUV photons, and thus brings in polarity change in the polymer structure. Integration of such radiation sensitive unit into polymer network avoids the need of chemical amplification which is otherwise needed for polarity switching in the case of chemically amplified photoresists (CARs). Indeed, we successfully patterned highly ordered wide-raging dense nanofeatures that include nanodots, nanowaves, nanoboats, star-elbow etc. All these developed nanopatterns have been well characterized by FESEM and AFM techniques. Finally, the potential of polyMAPDST has been established by successful transfer of patterns into silicon substrate through adaptation of compatible etch recipes.