Manipulating the electronic structure of platinum via alloying with ruthenium to boost photocatalytic selective hydrogenation with water as a proton source

Regulating the electronic structure of metal sites to develop high-performance catalysts for selective hydrogenation reactions is very important for sustainable organic synthesis, yet still challenging. Herein, we adopt a facile method to rationally design an ultrafine PtRu alloy cocatalyst on CdS nanorods (PtRu/CdS) for the efficient photocatalytic hydrogenation reaction with water as a proton source. The ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy studies uncover that alloying promotes the separation of photoexcited carriers, and density functional theory calculations demonstrate that alloying reduces the energy barrier of the rate-determining step, thus enhancing the hydrogenation activity. This work opens a new avenue to rationally design highly-active metal-modified photocatalysts via modulating electronic structures of co-catalysts.