Ceria-Coated Gold Nanorods for Plasmon-Enhanced Near-Infrared Photocatalytic and Photoelectrochemical Performances

Metal/semiconductor heteronanostructures perform wide applications in light-driven physical and chemical processes; in particular, nanomaterials based on anisotropic metal nanocrystals with tunable plasmonic properties have attracted intense interest. We report an efficient hydrothermal method for the synthesis of well-defined ceria (CeO2)-coated gold nanorods (AuNRs) by employing the original hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide as the ligands and soft-template. Importantly, the Au/CeO2 core/shell NRs have well maintained the tunable longitudinal plasmon resonance of AuNRs in the near-infrared (NIR) region. We demonstrate that this heteronanostructure can accelerate the ceria-dependent Fenton-like reaction through the plasmon-induced hot-electron injection under NIR light illumination. The generation of hot-electrons is further revealed by detecting the NIR-light-driven photocurrent of a photoelectrochemical cell based on the Au/CeO2 core/shell NRs modified electrode.