Abstract
The successful development of artificial photosynthesis requires finding new materials able to efficiently harvest sunlight and catalyze hydrogen generation and carbon dioxide reduction reactions. Plasmonic nanoparticles are promising candidates for these tasks, due to their ability to confine solar energy into molecular regions. Here, we review recent developments in hybrid plasmonic photocatalysis, including the combination of plasmonic nanomaterials with catalytic metals, semiconductors, perovskites, 2D materials, metal–organic frameworks, and electrochemical cells. We perform a quantitative comparison of the demonstrated activity and selectivity of these materials for solar fuel generation in the liquid phase. In this way, we critically assess the state-of-the-art of hybrid plasmonic photocatalysts for solar fuel production, allowing its benchmarking against other existing heterogeneous catalysts. Our analysis allows the identification of the best performing plasmonic systems, useful to design a new generation of plasmonic catalysts.
Highlights
The successful development of artificial photosynthesis requires finding new materials able to efficiently harvest sunlight and catalyze hydrogen generation and carbon dioxide reduction reactions
Taking inspiration from this, artificial photosynthesis has become one of the most important research fields in the past decade. It consists mainly of two types of processes: one is water-splitting into hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2) or the H2 production from H2containing compounds, and the other is the reduction of CO2 into fuels and chemicals, such as carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and oxygenates
Plasmonic nanoparticles (PNPs) are promising materials to perform these tasks, due to their exceptional absorption and their ability to control light and heat at the nanoscale.[3−6] the inclusion of a plasmonic material into a multicomponent nanostructure can greatly enhance its photocatalytic performance compared to the individual components
Summary
AExperiment duration. bNegligible product detected without plasmonic material. cNormalized only by catalytic metal. dNegligible product detected without light. eSupported by magnetic field. Explored hybrids that exploit the combination of photoactive linkers and doped metal nodes was decorated with plasmonic core−shell Au@Pd nanoparticles resulting in the PNPs and MOFs to boost the performance of photocatalytic second highest formation rate reported (see Table 10). The hybrid shows how the building blocks of MOFs can be smartly designed to, for example, promote certain steps in the synthesis, facilitate charge transfer, or enhance absorption properties in combination with PNPs. While the concepts used in the previously discussed hybrids are promising, by far the highest formation rate with 25 000 μmol g−1 h−1 was reported for MIL-101/Au@CdS catalyzing the water-splitting reaction.[237] Here, Au@CdS core−shell particles were assembled on a MOF structure (MIL-101).
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