High efficiency photocatalytic reaction dominated by the direct transfer of hot electrons

摘要

Low production efficiency and utilization are bottlenecks that restrict the development of hot electron generation. In this paper, we explore the hot electron utilization efficiency under different binding modes between molecules and nanoparticles. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) was conducted to monitor the surface plasmon resonance (SPR)-driven photocatalytic reaction of p-nitrothiophenol (pNTP) dimerizing into p, p'-dimercaptoazobenzene (DMAB) for the in-situ observation of the hot electron transfer process. Au and Au@SiO2 are used as SERS enhancement materials to study the reaction process of pNTP under laser irradiation. The results indicate that hot electrons are derived from Au nanoparticles as opposed to gold film. By comparing physical and chemical adsorption, it is found that Au and pNTP have the highest utilization efficiency of hot electrons in the chemical bond state, which provides an important basis for selecting photocatalytic methods.