Hybrid semiconductor/metal nanoparticles produced by colloid chemistry for photo catalytic conservation of energy

With today’s strong focus on renewable energy sources, also the conversion of e.g. solar energy into chemically bound energy comes into the focus of recent research activities. Very popular examples are e.g. fuel cells as energy conversion units which relay on chemically stored energy in form of hydrogen. This hydrogen could e.g. be produced exploiting solar energy via the photo catalytic splitting of water. In the framework of this project, novel metal semiconductor/metal hybrid nanoparticles shall be synthesized via means of colloid chemistry and their performance for various photocatalytic reactions will be evaluated. Apart from simple (quasi) spherical nanoparticles, also more elaborately shaped nanoparticles like rods and branched nanoparticles shall be synthesized and their photocatalytic performance will be compared to spherical ones. A focus will be put on structure property correlations with specific focus on size and shape of the nanocrystals, their crystal faceting and the character of the metal/semiconductor interface.