Gao Chuanbo's research group of the Research Institute of Frontier Life Science had made new progress in the direction of precious metal compound nanomaterial. Its latest fruit "Ligand-Exchange Assisted Formation of Au/TiO2 Schottky Contact for Visible-Light Photocatalysis" was published online on the authoritative periodical in the international field of nanomaterial Nano Letters (its influence facto is12.940) in October 20. The first author of the paper is postdoctor Ding Dawei from the Research Institute of Frontier Life Science.

Nanogold and titanium dioxide compound catalyst is a kind of new visible light catalyst appeared in recent years. It has potential application value in controlling and preventing environmental pollution and making hydrogen by photolyzed water. The catalyst is prepared by precipitating and depositing. Therefore, it is hard to accurately control the natures of nanogold such as shape, appearance and size and the optimal photocatalysis effect can’t be got. In recent years, colloid gold preparation technology develops very fast. The research group had obtained some achievements in the field. At present, it is convenient for people to prepare a large batch of colloid gold nanoparticles that have certain shapes, appearances and sizes. The work applied the colloid gold nanoparticles to the preparation of gold / titanium dioxide compound catalyst and realized the optimization of photocatalysis activation by controlling the nature of nanogold. The difficulty of the synthesis route is that lots of end capping agent must be added in the preparation process. The end capping agent is easy to stay in the interface between nanogold and titanium dioxide and form an insulation layer, which will become the biggest barrier for electronic transmission in the process of visible light catalysis. Therefore, this work pointed out a new ligand exchange strategy, which could effectively wipe off the end capping agent on the surface of colloid gold and promote the strong interaction between nanogold and titanium dioxide and make it become an efficient visible light catalyst. In addition, the tactic has an obvious effect on the surface clearing up of many precious metal nanomaterials and the troubles of these materials in the actual application generated by the existence of end capping agent will be solved hopefully.

The work was funded by the National Natural Science Fund, the Basic Research Operation Fee and Postdoctoral Science Fund of XJTU.