Combining plasmonic and catalytic properties in bimetallic gold-platinum nanoparticles for hydrogenation reactions

Plasmonic is an emerging field which has showed application for photocatlysis. Here we investigate a gold/platinum bimetallic catalytic system, and try to show how the catalytic properties of gold nanoparticles can be us to harvest visible light energy to increase the catalytic activity of platinum. Platinum being are rare and expensive metal, we also took the opportunity to find the optimal amount of catalyst to reduce platinum use. The catalyst is composed of a core spherical gold nanoparticles, of around 15 nm diameter. They were synthesized using an inversed Turkevich method, based on trisodium citrate, gold precursor salt and done in solution. Various amount of platinum was deposited on those nanoparticles using seeded growth method. The amount of platinum varied for single atoms to an atomic monolayer. This suspension of nanoparticles was deposited on ultrafine silica powder to be used for certain reaction and characterization. The material was characterized via several technics. UV-Visible and Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy were used to characterize its optical properties and showed a absorption peak around 524 nm characteristic of gold nanoparticles of this size. Imaging was done using electron microscopy (SEM and TEM) to study the morphology and showed monodisperse and spherical particles. The exact composition of the different catalyst were obtain using Atomic Emission Spectroscopy. The study was conducted by using reduction reaction as tests to investigate differences in conversion and selectivity under dark and monochromatic 525 nm and 427 nm light conditions. We chose to work on reduction of 4-nitrophenol, phenylacetylene and nitrobenzene, because they are widely used both in research and industry, and are easy to set up. Some catalyst showed good enhancement under 525 nm light, especially the one with the least amount of platinum. Different selectivity were also observed, indicating the presence of different reaction pathways under light conditions