Site-specific growth of AgPd nanodendrites on highly purified Au bipyramids with remarkable catalytic performance.

Abstract

Au nanorods have been extensively explored in various applications as the template for heterogeneous metallic nanostructures. However, Au bipyramids (AuBPs) have been paid much less attention although they possess an intriguing crystalline structure and extremely superior plasmonic properties which are absent in AuNRs. The state-of-the-art synthesis cannot produce pure AuBPs, which has become a major barrier to their various applications like catalysis since purity is often critical for achieving the desired performance. Herein, we have shown a facile approach to obtain large-scale high-purity AuBPs. The purity of AuBPs can be improved from 30 to 50% for the as-synthesized AuBP solution to over 95% for the purified solution. Site-specific growth of AgPd nanodendrites on multiply twinned AuBPs from core-shell to tipped nanostructures was achieved for the first time by coupling a galvanic replacement with a co-reduction process, which show remarkable catalytic activity in the reduction reaction of 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) by NaBH4. The use of ascorbic acid (AA) as a reductant in the co-reduction process and the intriguing crystalline structure of AuBPs play a critical role in forming these unique structures. We believe that this work would provide a general strategy to prepare high-purity AuBP based trimetallic nanostructures, which offers the opportunity for AuBPs to be widely used in catalysis or other plasmonic-effect related applications in the near future.