Abstract
Herein we explore the role of localized plasmonic heat generated by resonantly excited gold (Au) NPs on visible light driven photocatalysis process. Au NPs are deposited on the surface of vertically aligned zinc oxide nanorods (ZnO NRs). The localized heat generated by Au NPs under 532 nm continuous laser excitation (SPR excitation) was experimentally probed using Raman spectroscopy by following the phonon modes of ZnO. Under the resonant excitation the temperature at the surface of the Au-ZnO NRs reaches up to about 300 °C, resulting in almost 6 times higher apparent quantum yield (AQY) for photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue (MB) compared to the bare ZnO NRs. Under solar light irradiation the Au-ZnO NRs demonstrated visible light photocatalytic activity twice that of what was achieved with bare ZnO NRs, while significantly reduced the activation energy required for the photocatalytic reactions allowing the reactions to occur at a faster rate.
Highlights
We explore the role of localized plasmonic heat generated by resonantly excited gold (Au) NPs on visible light driven photocatalysis process
Under solar light irradiation the Au-zinc oxide nanorods (ZnO NRs) demonstrated visible light photocatalytic activity twice that of what was achieved with bare zinc oxide (ZnO) NRs, while significantly reduced the activation energy required for the photocatalytic reactions allowing the reactions to occur at a faster rate
The scanning electron micrograph of Au-ZnO NRs is shown in Fig. 1(a), where Au NPs deposited on the surface of the ZnO NRs are clearly visible
Summary
We explore the role of localized plasmonic heat generated by resonantly excited gold (Au) NPs on visible light driven photocatalysis process. Richardson et al.[23] has introduced another approach using thermooptical spectroscopy based on phase transformation of a matrix, which can measure optical response and thermal response at the surface of the meal nanostructures Another group has used metal NPs coupled to a semiconductor with a polymer chain, where they have monitored the emission intensity of the semiconductor which is highly dependent on the chain length of the polymer that varies with surrounding temperature induced by the SPR heating[24]. The effect of the localized heating on the apparent quantum yield (AQY) and activation energy (Ea) of the Au-ZnO system was investigated, along with the other major contributing factors such as enhanced visible light harvesting and efficient photo-generated charge separation across the Au-ZnO interface in order to obtain a detailed insight on the visible light driven plasmonic photocatalysis by metal-semiconductor systems
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