The chemical industry relies on heterogeneous catalytic processes to manufacture products, such as fuels and fertilizers, critical to sustaining human life and development. Current catalytic reactions like carbon dioxide hydrogenation are almost exclusively driven by thermal energy. Heated catalysts are required to achieve practical reaction rates; however, the high thermal energy input ultimately deteriorates the catalyst lifetime due to sintering and produces unfavorable side products. The implementation of plasmonic metal nanoparticles with strong light absorption capabilities is a strategy to efficiently harness light energy and create hot carriers to drive chemical reactions. The ideal plasmonic photocatalysts should simultaneously act as an absorber to capture light as well as a catalytic surface to interact with surface intermediates. Rhodium nanoparticles are promising materials for photocatalysis due to their versatile catalytic properties and excellent tunable plasmonic properties. However, major drawbacks include its rarity and low absorption ability. To overcome these limitations, the overgrowth of rhodium on gold nanoparticles creates bimetallic nanostructures exhibiting a columnar rhodium surface for increased light absorption. Our focus on nanoparticle design and synthesis, as well as mechanistic studies of CO<sub>2</sub> hydrogenation using tailored plasmonic photocatalysts help to demonstrate a significant step toward sustainable and practical catalysis by reducing or eliminating heating requirements.

Using tailored plasmonic photocatalysts for carbon dioxide hydrogenation

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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