Surface plasmon enhanced ethylene glycol electrooxidation based on hollow platinum-silver nanodendrites structures

Abstract

Abstract The surface plasmon resonance (SPR) effect on noble metals to convert solar energy into chemical has attracted a lot of interest. However, the lack of highly efficient photocatalysts is still the forbidden obstacle as well as their large-scale development. Therefore, we focus on plasmon resonance enhanced electrocatalytic oxidation of liquid fuel employing photocatalysts to develop unique hollow platinum-silver (Pt-Ag) nanocrystals. The hollow Pt-Ag is formed of nanodendrites (Pt1-Ag1) which display a great enhancement in catalytic activity towards ethylene glycol oxidation with the mass and specific activity found to be: 7045.2 mA/mg and 14.1 mA/cm2, respectively. This is due to: the SPR effect, efficient electronic distribution and synergistic properties, together with the unique hollow dendritic nanostructures. Impressively, the SPR effect also induces the optimum Pt-Ag nanocatalsyst under visible light irradiation conditions to display 1.7-fold enhancements in catalytic activity compared to that under dark conditions. In addition, 6.2 and 7.0-fold enhancements were obtained when the optimized Pt-Ag was employed as photoelectrocatalyst compared to the commercial Pt/C. Therefore, we present a unique catalyst which produces a high catalytic activity and long-term stability compared to those previously reported. More importantly, we also introduce a promising approach towards the designing of a plasmonic metal nanocatalyst with ideal nanostructures for liquid fuel oxidations.