title: Efficient coupling of solar energy to catalytic hydrogenation by using well-designed palladium nanostructures.
abstract: A Ru(3+)-mediated synthesis for the unique Pd concave nanostructures, which can directly harvest UV-to-visible light for styrene hydrogenation, is described. The catalytic efficiency under 100 mW cm(-2) full-spectrum irradiation at room temperature turns out to be comparable to that of thermally (70 °C) driven reactions. The yields obtained with other Pd nanocrystals, such as nanocubes and octahedrons, are lower. The nanostructures reported here have sufficient plasmonic cross-sections for light harvesting in a broad spectral range owing to the reduced shape symmetry, which increases the solution temperature for the reaction by the photothermal effect. They possess a large quantity of atoms at corners and edges where local heat is more efficiently generated, thus providing active sites for the reaction. Taken together, these factors drastically enhance the hydrogenation reaction by light illumination.
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials, School of Chemistry and Materials Science and CAS Key Laboratory of Materials for Energy Conversion, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026 (P. R. China) http://staff.ustc.edu.cn/∼yjxiong/
authors.forename: Ran
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Long
authors.forename: Zhoulv
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Rao
authors.forename: Keke
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Mao
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Chao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Qiliang
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Chengming
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Zhi-Yuan
authors.initials: ZY
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Xiaojun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Yujie
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xiong
keywords: heterogeneous catalysis; hydrogenation; nanostructures; palladium; surface plasmon resonance