Monitoring of the Plasmon Resonance of Gold Nanoparticles in Au/TiO2 Catalyst under Oxidative and Reducing Atmospheres

Diffuse optical reflectance of Au/TiO2 powder catalysts, prepared by the deposition precipitation method, is measured in the UV-visible range in controlled atmosphere. An intense optical absorption observed around 550 nm is interpreted by the excitation of plasmon resonances in the 4 nm gold nanoparticles (NPs). The location, intensity, and width of the absorption can be reproduced theoretically by using a distribution of shapes of the NPs. The changes of the reflectance upon exposure of the Au/TiO2 catalyst to different atmospheres (O-2/He, H-2/He, CO/He) arc measured in real-time by use of a homemade differential diffuse reflectance (DDR) spectrometer. The derivative-like DDR spectrum shows that the exposure to oxygen leads to the adsorption of oxygen species at the surface of the Au NPs. By modeling the DDR spectrum, we analyze different possible processes that could occur during the oxygen exposure and we find that the main effect is a charge transfer from gold to the adsorbed oxygen species, combined with a slight flattening of the Au NPs. The exposure to CO gives a similar but much smaller effect than the one of oxygen. Finally, real-time optical measurements performed during the exposures to oxygen indicate that two different sets of particles are probably present in the catalyst, and react with different kinetics, slightly flat three-dimensional NPs and very flat almost two-dimensional NPs.