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A study of size-controlled Au@Cu2O nanocomposite for highly improved methyl orange catalytic performances

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Abstract

In this study, we synthesized Au-Cu2O core–shell nanoparticles (Au@Cu2O NPs) with epitaxial Cu2O shell, which have highly improved catalytic performances in methyl orange reduction reaction. We have obtained Au@Cu2O NPs with different sizes at low temperatures by changing the amount of Cu2+ precursor. Both Au and Cu2O are catalytic materials, especially Cu2O, as a p-type semiconductor, whose catalytic ability depends on the crystalline facets. Catalytic reduction of methyl orange (MO) was used as a model system to explore the catalytic properties of Au@Cu2O nanocomposite. In comparison to pure Au and Cu2O NPs, the catalytic performance of Au@Cu2O has a noticeable improvement. The best catalytic rate was ~ 22 times faster than that of AuNRs and ~ 4 times than that of Cu2O NPs. By studying the catalytic mechanism, it is supposed that the Schottky barrier at the Au-Cu2O interfaces leads to the charge separation, which is beneficial to catalysis. Therefore, the Au@Cu2O NPs we designed with controllable shell thickness is an ideal composite material in the catalyst domain.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Sudan Shen for her assistance in TEM at State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering (Zhejiang University). The authors also acknowledge financial support from National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, Grant No. 61905056). This work was also supported by National Key R&D Program of China (Grant:2018YFE0207500), the National Natural Science Foundation (Grant 91938201 and 61871169), Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation (Grant LZ20F010004) and Project of Ministry of Science and Technology (Grant D20011).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, 310018, People’s Republic of China

    Yun-Qi Dou, Tian-Song Deng, Qi Zhang & Zhiqun Cheng

  2. College of Materials and Environmental Engineering, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, 310018, People’s Republic of China

    **aoyu Zhao & Jia Liu

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Contributions

Y-QD: Investigation; Writing – original draft; Visualization. T-SD: Writing – review & editing; Funding acquisition; Supervision. QZ: Investigation. X-YZ: Resources. JL: Writing – review & editing; Resources. Z-QC: Funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Tian-Song Deng.

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Dou, YQ., Deng, TS., Zhang, Q. et al. A study of size-controlled Au@Cu2O nanocomposite for highly improved methyl orange catalytic performances. J Mater Sci 58, 7583–7593 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-023-08524-1

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