Ordered bimetallic plasmonic nanostructures for photocatalytic soot degradation.

Soot is considered to be the second-largest contributor to global excess radiative forcing after CO2 and deemed responsible for tripling the amount of premature deaths by 2060. We therefore propose a fundamental study to develop an efficient photocatalyst for the degradation of soot deposits, using (solar) light as the energy input. Photocatalytic oxidation is often achieved with TiO2 as the photoactive material. The main drawback of TiO2 is its large band gap, which limits the overall solar light response to the UV region of the spectrum. As a solution, plasmonic photocatalysis using noble metal nanoparticles (NPs) has emerged as a promising technology to expand the activity window of traditional photocatalysts to the entire UV-visible light region of the solar spectrum. In this project gold and silver NPs will be merged to overcome their individual limitations and form stable bimetallic NPs with highly tunable plasmonic properties over a wide wavelength range. These bimetallic NPs will be organized as an ordered plasmonic nanostructure, that will be characterized from bulk to nanoscale, a part of which in collaboration with the Institute for Catalysis at Hokkaido University, Japan. The effect of plasmonic enhancement on the photocatalytic soot degradation mechanism will be studied on a fundamental level by in-situ FTIR spectroscopy, but also through larger scale demonstration experiments that illustrate the relevance of this research to the broader audience.

Keywords:PHOTOCATALYSIS, PLASMONS, PARTICLE CHARACTERISATION, SOOT

Disciplines:Condensed matter physics and nanophysics, Analytical chemistry, Macromolecular and materials chemistry, Sustainable chemistry, Sustainable and environmental engineering