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Updated: Aug 20, 2025
Preparation of Silver-Palladium Alloyed Nanoparticles for Plasmonic Catalysis under Visible-Light Illumination
Published on: August 18, 2020
Controlling Selectivity in Plasmonic Catalysis: Switching Reaction Pathway from Hydrogenation to Homocoupling Under
Erandi Peiris1, Sébastien Hanauer1, Tien Le2
1University of Helsinki, Department of Chemistry, A.I. Virtasen aukio 1, Helsinki, Finland.
Abstract:
Plasmonic catalysis enables the use of light to accelerate molecular transformations. Its application to the control reaction selectivity is highly attractive but remains challenging. Here, we have found that the plasmonic properties in AgPd nanoparticles allowed different reaction pathways for tunable product formation under visible-light irradiation. By employing the hydrogenation of phenylacetylene as a model transformation, we demonstrate that visible-light irradiation can be employed to steer the reaction pathway from hydrogenation to homocoupling. Our data showed that the decrease in the concentration of H species at the surface due to plasmon-enhanced H2 desorption led to the control in selectivity. These results provide important insights into the understanding of reaction selectivity with light, paving the way for the application of plasmonic catalysis to the synthesis of 1,3-diynes, and bringing the vision of light-driven transformations with target selectivity one step closer to reality.
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