Holey AuAg textured nanoplates for plasmonic catalysis under low-energy near infrared irradiation

Abstract

We report the synthesis of holey, textured AuAg nanoplates (HTNPs) for enhanced near-infrared (NIR) plasmonic catalysis. The nanostructures are synthesized via a micelle-directed assembly, yielding a serrated morphology that generates intense electromagnetic "hot spots" and broadband vis-NIR absorption, as confirmed by FEM simulations. This design enables efficient harvesting of photons from an 810 nm LED source. In the model reduction of 4-nitrophenol, the HTNPs exhibit a pronounced photocatalytic enhancement, with a reaction rate under NIR light ( k_light = 0.076 ± 0.016 min⁻¹) ~5.8 times greater than in the dark ( k_dark = 0.013 ± 0.0071 min⁻¹). This work establishes a template-guided strategy to tailor plasmonic surface architectures, advancing catalyst design for activation by low-energy NIR light.

Keywords

Gold-silver nanoplates / Surface texturing / Holey / Near-infrared plasmonics / Oriented attachment / Photocatalysis

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Guangtao Wang: Validation, Investigation, Conceptualization. Xiangyu Tong: Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation. Ruiqi Shen: Formal analysis. Xuening Jin: Formal analysis. Xiaohu Wu: Writing – original draft, Resources, Project administration. Yanyun Ma: Writing – original draft, Supervision, Resources. Yiqun Zheng: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.

Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (Grant Nos. ZR2025QC109 & ZR2022MB120), the Hundred Outstanding Talent Program of Jining University (Grant Nos. 2020ZYRC05 & 2023ZYRC9), and the Science and Technology Innovation Team Foundation of Jining University (Nos. 23KCTD04 & 23KCTD05 & 24KCTD09). This work is also supported by the University Feature Laboratory for Energy Conversion and Nanocatalysis of Shandong Province, the Suzhou Key Laboratory of Functional Nano & Soft Materials, the Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science & Technology, the 111 Project, and the Joint International Research Laboratory of Carbon-Based Functional Materials and Devices.

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