Gold and palladium are both valuable metals, for different reasons. Palladium is known for its catalytic ability, and gold for its plasmonic properties. A material that combines these assets holds potential for a range of applications, including light-driven chemical energy storage and enhanced in situ reaction monitoring.
Creating a material with the properties of both gold and palladium is not as simple as mixing the two together. When mixed, each material dampens the other’s finest quality, such that the performance of the hybrid material is less than that of the sum of its parts.
A more complex mixture in which the palladium and gold are arranged into an eight-armed nanoparticle, however, seems to work better than a simple mixture. Scientists at Rice Univ. created such gold-palladium octopods and showed that the hybrid nanoparticle maintains the catalytic and plasmonic performance of the individual materials.
▲ Chemists have created a hybrid material of gold (yellow) and palladium (red) that exhibits both plasmonic and catalytic activity. Image courtesy of Ringe Group, Rice Univ...
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