Accelerated pyro-catalytic hydrogen production enabled by plasmonic local heating of Au on pyroelectric BaTiO3 nanoparticles

Abstract

The greatest challenge that limits the application of pyro-catalytic materials is the lack of highly frequent thermal cycling due to the enormous heat capacity of ambient environment, resulting in low pyro-catalytic efficiency. Here, we introduce localized plasmonic heat sources to rapidly yet efficiently heat up pyro-catalytic material itself without wasting energy to raise the surrounding temperature, triggering a significantly expedited pyro-catalytic reaction and enabling multiple pyro-catalytic cycling per unit time. In our work, plasmonic metal/pyro-catalyst composite is fabricated by in situ grown gold nanoparticles on three-dimensional structured coral-like BaTiO₃ nanoparticles, which achieves a high hydrogen production rate of 133.1 ± 4.4 μmol·g⁻¹·h⁻¹ under pulsed laser irradiation. We also use theoretical analysis to study the effect of plasmonic local heating on pyro-catalysis. The synergy between plasmonic local heating and pyro-catalysis will bring new opportunities in pyro-catalysis for pollutant treatment, clean energy production, and biological applications.

While pyrocatalysis offers a means to store energy in chemical bonds from temperature changes, most materials show low conversion efficiencies. Here, authors examine Au nanoparticles on BaTiO3 and demonstrate localized plasmonic heat sources to enhance pyrocatalytic H₂ evolution.