Highly Dispersed RuOOH Nanoparticles on Silica Spheres:An Efficient Photothermal Catalyst for Selective Aerobic Oxidation of Benzyl Alcohol

Photothermal catalysis represents a promising strategy to utilize the renewable energy source(e.g.,solar energy)to drive chemical reactions more efficiently.Successful and efficient photothermal catalysis relies on the availability of ideal photothermal catalysts,which can provide both large areas of catalytically active surface and strong light absorption power simultaneously.Such duplex requirements of a photothermal catalyst exhibit opposing dependence on the size of the catalyst nanoparticles,i.e.,smaller size is beneficial for achieving higher surface area and more active surface,whereas larger size favors the light absorption in the nanoparticles.In this article,we report the synthesis of ultrafine RuOOH nanoparticles with a size of 2–3 nm uniformly dispersed on the surfaces of silica(SiOx)nanospheres of hundreds of nanometers in size to tackle this challenge of forming an ideal photothermal catalyst.The ultrasmall RuOOH nanoparticles exhibit a large surface area as well as the ability to activate adsorbed molecular oxygen.The SiOx nanospheres exhibit strong surface light scattering resonances to enhance the light absorption power of the small RuOOH nanoparticles anchored on the SiOx surface.Therefore,the RuOOH/SiOx composite particles represent a new class of efficient photothermal catalysts with a photothermal energy conversion efficiency of 92.5%for selective aerobic oxidation of benzyl alcohol to benzylaldehyde under ambient conditions.

Mesoporous SiO_2 Nanoparticles:A Unique Platform Enabling Sensitive Detection of Rare Earth Ions with Smartphone Camera

Fast and sensitive detection of dilute rare earth species still represents a challenge for an on-site survey of new resources and evaluation of the economic value. In this work, a robust and low-cost protocol has been developed to analyze the concentration of rare earth ions using a smartphone camera. The success of this protocol relies on mesoporous silica nanoparticles(MSNs) with large-area negatively charged surfaces, on which the rare earth cations(e.g., Eu^(3+)) are efficiently adsorbed through electrostatic attraction to enable a ‘‘concentrating effect''. The initial adsorption rate is as fast as 4025 mg(g min)^(-1), and the adsorption capacity of Eu^(3+)ions in the MSNs is as high as 4730 mg g^(-1)(equivalent to ～41.2 M) at 70 °C. The concentrated Eu^(3+)ions in the MSNs can form a complex with a light sensitizer of 1,10-phenanthroline to significantly enhance the characteristic red emission of Eu^(3+)ions due to an ‘‘antenna effect'' that relies on the efficient energy transfer from the light sensitizer to the Eu^(3+)ions.The positive synergy of ‘‘concentrating effect'' and ‘‘antenna effect'' in the MSNs enables the analysis of rare earth ions in a wide dynamic range and with a detection limit down to ～80 nM even using a smartphone camera. Our results highlight the promise of the protocol in fieldwork for exploring valuable rare earth resources.

Enabling Reaction Selectivity of Platinum Catalysts by Photoinduced Electronic Effects

Reaction selectivity is crucial to producing target molecules of importance with minimum waste.This work reports an efficient and green strategy to improve reaction selectivity in visible-light-mediated chemical transformations by employing Pt/SiOx photocatalysts,which is ascribed to light-induced surface electronic modification in the small Pt nanocrystals.This strategy has been successfully applied to synthesize commercially valuable but thermodynamically unfavorable arylhydroxylamines with high selectivity via partial hydrogenation of the respective nitroarenes.Surface modification of the small Pt nanocrystals with triethanolamine(TEA)molecules further optimizes the Pt electronic structure to favor the reaction selectivity.The light-induced surface electronic structure alterations and the TEA chemical modification act synergistically to prevent the readsorption of desorbed electron-rich arylhydroxylamines.This prevents the complete hydrogenation of arylhydroxylamines to respective anilines,leading to high arylhydroxylamine selectivity of 81−91%.In addition,photoillumination of Pt nanocrystals always accelerates the reaction kinetics significantly regardless of their surface modification.