1. Direct evidence of IR-driven hot electron transfer in metal-free plasmonic W18O49/Carbon heterostructures for enhanced catalytic H2 production.
- Author
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Lu, Na, Zhang, Zhenyi, Wang, Yue, Liu, Benkang, Guo, Lijiao, Wang, Li, Huang, Jindou, Liu, Kuichao, and Dong, Bin
- Subjects
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HYDROGEN production , *CHARGE exchange , *HETEROSTRUCTURES , *METAL catalysts , *CHEMICAL yield , *CARBON fibers - Abstract
Plasmonic nanostructures have received significant attention in the field of solar-to-fuels conversion, because they can collect and utilize abundant low-energy photons to generate high-energy hot electrons for producing green chemical fuels. However, the ultrafast relaxation process of hot electron often leads to poor quantum yields of plasmonic nanostructures. Herein, we construct the one-dimensional W 18 O 49 /Carbon heterostructure for employing low-cost electrospun carbon fibers as the “electron mediator” to hinder the relaxation of hot electron in plasmonic W 18 O 49 nanowires. We confirm that the IR-excited plasmonic hot electrons in W 18 O 49 nanowires can quickly transfer to carbon fibers within only ∼50 fs in the W 18 O 49 /C heterostructure. This kinetics time is much shorter than the relaxation time of these hot electrons from high-energy surface plasmon (SP) to the ground state in W 18 O 49 nanowires (∼5.5 ps). As a result, upon low-energy IR-light excitation, the W 18 O 49 /C heterostructures exhibit nearly 2-fold enhancement on the catalytic H 2 production from ammonia borane as compared to single W 18 O 49 nanowires. Wavelength-dependent catalytic tests further indicate that this plasmon-enhanced catalytic activity is induced by the ultrafast transport process of plasmonic hot electron due to the localized surface plasmon resonance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2018
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