Sacrificial template-assisted fabrication of palladium hollow nanocubes and their application in electrochemical detection toward hydrogen peroxide

Pure Pd hollow nanocubes assembled with uniform nanoparticles were successfully fabricated via a one-step redox reaction by using Cu 2 O nanocubes as both sacrificial templates and the reducing agents. Almost no residual Cu 2 O cores remained in the final Pd cubic nanoshells which were composed of nanograins with an average diameter of approximately 6.5 nm. A wide liner range (0.1–24.0 mM), a relatively high sensitivity (287.7 mA M −1  cm −2 ) and a comparable detection limit (7.4 μM, S/N = 3) were observed in the electrochemical experiments, indicating that the obtained Pd hollow nanocubes as enzyme-free catalysts possessed excellent electrocatalytic activity to the reduction of H 2 O 2 .