Visible Light Mediated Deposition of Pt Nanocatalyst on Refractory Plasmonic Titanium Nitride Nanoparticles

Plasmonic photocatalyst can efficiently absorb light to generate photoexcited electrons to drive energy extensive catalytic reactions including CO2 reduction, water splitting and solar energy conversion. We have successfully synthesized composite plasmonic catalysts by visible-light-induced deposition of transition metal nanocatalysts such as Pt on refractory plasmonic titanium nitride (TiN) nanoparticles. Titanium nitride nanoparticles can absorb broad spectrum solar light to generate photoexcited electrons which reduce transition metal precursor salts to deposit the metal atoms on the surface. We could deposit different size of Pt nanocatalyts on titanium nitride by varying the photodeposition process conditions such as light intensities and duration of light illumination. We are studying the effect of light intensity, irradiation time and wavelength dependence of Pt precursor reduction rate to understand the reaction mechanism of Pt nanocatalyts deposition. The findings of this study can be used to develop a visible light mediated synthesis of single atom plasmonic catalysts under mild conditions, which has been a bottleneck for their widespread applications.