Room Temperature Preparation of Surface-Clean Hydrogen-Doped Plasmonic Molybdenum Oxide as a High-Efficient and Degradable Reactive Oxygen Species Scavenger

Considerable efforts have been made to develop reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavengers for removing high level of ROS. However, most of the reported ROS scavengers are nondegradable and involve harsh reaction conditions as well as utilize various surface ligands. In order to overcome these drawbacks, in the present work, we develop a facile and mild synthesis avenue for preparation of surface-clean hydrogen-doped molybdenum oxide (H 0.34 MoO 3 ) via simply mixing MoO 3 dispersion with aluminum foil under an acidic environment without any surface capping reagents at room temperature. The resulting H 0.34 MoO 3 can act as a broad-spectrum ROS scavenger, including . OH, H 2 O 2 , O 2 − , and 1 O 2 as well as 2, 2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH). The free radical scavenging activity of H 0.34 MoO 3 achieves as high as 71.6% and 99.1% for . OH and DPPH scavenging, which is comparable and superior to that of ascorbic acid that is a classic free radical scavenger. More significantly, the resulting H 0.34 MoO 3 is degrade, which can be degraded into molybdate ions under a neutral environment (pH 7.4).