Red-Light-Driven Water Splitting by Au(Core)-CdS(Shell) Half-Cut Nanoegg with Heteroepitaxial Junction

Shin-Ichi Naya; Takahiro Kume; Ryo Akashi; Musashi Fujishima; Hiroaki Tada

doi:10.1021/jacs.7b12972

Red-Light-Driven Water Splitting by Au(Core)-CdS(Shell) Half-Cut Nanoegg with Heteroepitaxial Junction

J Am Chem Soc. 2018 Jan 31;140(4):1251-1254. doi: 10.1021/jacs.7b12972. Epub 2018 Jan 19.

Authors

Shin-Ichi Naya¹, Takahiro Kume², Ryo Akashi², Musashi Fujishima², Hiroaki Tada^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Environmental Research Laboratory, Kindai University , 3-4-1, Kowakae, Higashi-Osaka, Osaka 577-8502, Japan.
² Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Kindai University , 3-4-1, Kowakae, Higashi-Osaka, Osaka 577-8502, Japan.

PMID: 29319317
DOI: 10.1021/jacs.7b12972

Abstract

A key material for artificial photosynthesis including water splitting is heteronanostructured (HNS) photocatalysts. The photocatalytic activity depends on the geometry and dimension, and the quality of junctions between the components. Here we present a half-cut Au(core)-CdS(shell) (HC-Au@CdS) nanoegg as a new HNS plasmonic photocatalyst for water splitting. UV-light irradiation of Au nanoparticle (NP)-loaded ZnO (Au/ZnO) at 50 °C induces the selective deposition of hexagonal CdS on the Au surface of Au/ZnO with an epitaxial (EPI) relation of CdS{0001}/Au{111}. The subsequent selective dissolution of the ZnO support at room temperature yields HC-Au@CdS with the Au NP size and EPI junction (#) retained. Red-light irradiation (λ_ex = 640 nm) of HC-Au@#CdS gives rise to continuous stoichiometric water splitting with an unprecedentedly high external quantum yield of 0.24%.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't