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Survey of cyclic voltammograms of lower aliphatic alcohols in 1 M KOH recorded at electrodes containing atomic gold is presented. The atomically structured gold is placed in polyaniline, which is deposited on a platinum electrode. The electrochemical behavior of these atomic gold electrodes (AGE) is compared with Pt/polyaniline electrode without gold and with Pt/polyaniline electrode containing “unstructured” nanoclusters of Au. The conditions were identical for all of the experiments. This allows direct visual comparison of the effect of atomic structuring. The electrochemical activity of the AGEs is dominated by the odd–even pattern of reactivity, and it is superimposed on specific electrochemical behavior of individual alcohols.

The effect of addition of one atom of palladium to n atoms of gold (n = 1–5) dispersed in polyaniline electrodes, for the electrooxidation of methanol and ethanol in alkaline solution has been investigated. For comparison, oxidation at pure atomic metal electrodes, Pt/PANI–Au n=2–7 and Pt/PANI–Pd n=2–6, was performed. It is shown that the one added Pd atom affects the oxidation peak currents and makes a significant difference in selectivity. Similar to our previous studies, the electrocatalytic activity has been correlated with the theoretically predicted HOMO–LUMO gap energies for the atomic metal alloys. Effect of addition of one atom of Pd to Au n in polyaniline .

Under precisely controlled conditions, atomic gold electrodes with even or odd number of Au atoms per polyaniline repeat unit (Pt/PANI/Au N for 0

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