Utilizing Plasmonic Near Fields to Enhance Catalytic Activity on Aluminum Nanocrystals Decorated with Transition Metal Nanoislands

The ubiquity of sunlight and the promise of a sustainable future through its capture drives the need to develop efficient photocatalysts. Plasmonic metal nanoparticles, those that show resonant electron oscillations under illumination, have arisen as promising materials for this application due to their ability to produce high temperatures and strong electric fields near their surface. 1 The most well studied plasmonic metals (Ag, Au) are prohibitively expensive for widespread use, and relatively inert for many important catalytic transformations. On the other hand, active transition metal catalysts (Pd, Pt, Ru, etc.) have been used in industrial catalytic applications for over a century, yet only weakly interact with light. Here, we show that decorating transition metal nanoislands onto the surface of earth-abundant plasmonic aluminum nanocrystal (AlNCs) can enhance catalytic activity through plasmonic near-fields leading to reaction selectivity not observed in traditional thermal reactions. 2