Pd‐Tipped Au Nanorods for Plasmon‐Enhanced Electrocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution with Photoelectric and Photothermal Effects

Abstract

Plasmonic bimetallic structures have been wildly used in photocatalysis, owing to their tunable optical properties and desirable catalytic activities. However, it is still a challenge to realize the enhanced electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) using these structures with electric, photo‐, and thermal effects. Herein, we report that Pd‐tipped Au nanorods (NRs) were prepared for electrochemical water splitting in the visible and near‐infrared region. The NRs exhibited a lower onset overpotential (40 mV) and high exchange current density (1.585 mA/cm2), which was largely ascribed to the increased carrier density in Pd induced by photo‐excited Au NRs, and further enhancement of Pd catalytic activity resulted from the photothermal effect of Au NRs. As the hot electron transport channel was hindered by excess Pd nanoparticles, it was found that the HER performance of tipped NRs was much higher than that of fully covered ones. This study extends enhanced electrocatalytic HER activity with plasmonic bimetallic structures by taking full advantage of the synergy between photoelectric and photothermal effects.

Operando unraveling photothermal-promoted dynamic active-sites generation in NiFe 2 O 4 for markedly enhanced oxygen evolution

“…Recently, introducing thermal energy to promote electrocatalytic conversion has attracted significant interest (7)(8)(9)(10). The thermal energy could accelerate the motion of reactant molecules, promote their effective collisions during the reaction, and thus make it easier to overcome the activation barrier (11,12).…”

Controllable synthesis of hierarchical Au/PdAg heterostructures consisting of nanosheets on nanorods with plasmon-enhanced electrocatalytic properties

“…The plasmon-enhanced electrocatalytic activity may be ascribed to the hot electron transfer and the photothermal effect. 10,16,31 While the hot electron transfer can be enhanced by the local electromagnetic field enhancement, the photothermal effect can be promoted by the strong absorption in the NIR region. Therefore, the hierarchical Au/PdAg NRNSs adopt advantageous structural features for both electrocatalysis and plasmon-enhanced electrocatalysis, thus showing the best electrocatalytic and photoassisted electrocatalytic activity.…”

“…28 It is noteworthy that there are several reports on the synthesis and plasmon-enhanced catalysis of hierarchical Au-Pd heterostructures made of GNRs covered by 1D Pd nanostructures; examples include Au-Pd superstructures with ordered Pd nanoarrays precisely grown on GNRs for plasmonenhanced carbon-carbon coupling reactions, 29 Pd nanodendrite-tipped GNRs for plasmon-enhanced Suzuki cross-coupling reactions, 30 and Pd-tipped GNRs for plasmon-enhanced electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution. 31 Furthermore, Au@PdAg core-shell nanorods were obtained from conversion of Au@Pd core-shell nanorods. 32 Some hierarchical Au-PdAg heterostructures based on GNRs were synthesized through CTABassisted overgrowth on GNRs 33 and conversion of Au@Ag core-shell nanorods, 34,35 and their applications in electrocatalytic ethanol oxidation were explored.…”

Plasmon-Induced Electrocatalysis with Multi-Component Nanostructures

“…One approach to increase the performance of a catalytic system is via the incorporation of special metal nanostructures, such as metal-tipped, porous, or needle-like plasmonic structures that have a high electrochemical surface area. Wei et al recently proposed plasmonic bimetallic structures based on Pt-tipped Au nanorods (Au NRs) for electrochemical water splitting in the visible and the near-infrared region [32]. They demonstrated that these nanostructures outperformed fully Pt-covered nanostructures, which show weak LSPR bands.…”