Photo-thermal reactions of ethanol over Ag/TiO2 catalysts. The role of silver plasmon resonance in the reaction kinetics

Photo-thermal catalytic reactions of ethanol over Ag/TiO2 were conducted in order to probe into the role of plasmonic resonance response in the reaction kinetics. In the 300–500 K temperature domain the increase in reaction rate is found to be mainly due to changes in the activation energy while above this temperature range the increase was due to the pre-exponential factor. These results might be linked to the role of plasmonic Ag particles in polarising the reaction intermediates and therefore increasing the reaction products at temperatures up to about 500 K.