Ordered macroporous bimetallic nanostructures: design, characterization, and applications.
Ordered porous metal nanomaterials have current and future potential applications, for example, as catalysts, as photonic crystals, as sensors, as porous electrodes, as substrates for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), in separation technology, and in other emerging nanotechnologies. Methods for creating such materials are commonly characterized as "templating", a technique that involves first the creation of a sacrificial template with a specific porous structure, followed by the filling of these pores with desired metal materials and finally the removal of the starting template, leaving behind a metal replica of the original template. From the viewpoint of practical applications, ordered metal nanostructures with hierarchical porosity, namely, macropores in combination with micropores or mesopores, are of particular interest because macropores allow large guest molecules to access and an efficient mass transport through the porous structures is enabled while the micropores or mesopores enhance the selectivity and the surface area of the metal nanostructures. For this objective, colloidal crystals (or artificial opals) consisting of three-dimensional (3D) long-range ordered arrays of silica or polymer microspheres are ideal starting templates. However, with respect to the colloidal crystal templating strategies for production of ordered porous metal nanostructures, there are two challenging questions for materials scientists: (1) how to uniformly and controllably fill the interstitial space of the colloidal crystal templates and (2) how to generate ordered composite metal nanostructures with hierarchical porosity. This Account reports on recent work in the development and applications of ordered macroporous bimetallic nanostructures in our laboratories. A series of strategies have been explored to address the challenges in colloidal crystal template techniques. By rationally tailoring experimental parameters, we could readily and selectively design different types of ordered bimetallic nanostructures with hierarchical porosity by using a general template technique. The applications of the resulting nanostructures in catalysis and as substrates for SERS are described. Taking the ordered porous Au/Pt nanostructures as examples for applications as catalysts, the experimental results show that both the ordered hollow Au/Pt nanostructure and the ordered macroporous Au/Pt nanostructure exhibit high catalytic ability due to their special structural characteristics, and their catalytic activity is component-dependent. As for SERS applications, primary experimental results show that these ordered macroporous Au/Ag nanostructured films are highly desirable for detection of DNA bases by the SERS technique in terms of a high Raman intensity enhancement, good stability, and reproducibility, suggesting that these nanostructures may find applications in the rapid detection of DNA and DNA fragments.
Lu
Lehui
L
State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 130022 Changchun, People's Republic of China.
Eychmüller
Alexander
A