Amino acid-induced synthesis of chiral AgAuPt nanoparticles with branched structure for circularly polarized enantioselective photoelectrocatalytic water splitting.

ABSTRACT

Chiral Plasmonic nanomaterials have gradually illustrated intriguing circularly polarized light (CPL)-dependent properties in photocatalysis due to their unique chiral optical activity. However, the connection between chiral characteristics and catalytic performance of these materials in cooperative systems is rarely reported and remains a challenge task. In this work, branched AgAuPt nanoparticles induced by L/d-cysteine (Cys) with strong and perfectly symmetric circular dichroism (CD) signals are synthesized. Chiral branched AgAuPt nanoparticles firstly exhibit superior typical electrocatalytic performance. In the photoelectrocatalytic system, chiral branched AgAuPt nanoparticles demonstrate selective catalytic water splitting performance. Specifically, chiral branched AgAuPt with related CPL irradiation exhibits enhanced acidic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) performance. Under the continuous irradiation of related CPL, the chiral catalyst generates more heat, which further increases the catalytic activity. This contribution of heat is supported by density functional theory (DFT) calculation results. The changes in chiroptical activity during this process are recorded by variable temperature CD spectra. This work provides a novel paradigm for designing chiral catalysis systems and emphasizes the profound promise of chiral plasmonic nanomaterials as chiral catalysts.