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Emergence of Visible-Light Water Oxidation Upon Hexaniobate-Ligand Entrapment of Quantum-Confined Copper-Oxide Cores.

Chandan Kumar TiwariShubasis RoyTal TubulMark BaranovNitai LefflerMu LiPanchao YinAlevtina NeymanIra A Weinstock
Published in: Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) (2023)
The formation of small 1 to 3 nm organic-ligand free metal-oxide nanocrystals (NCs) is essential to utilization of their attractive size-dependent properties in electronic devices and catalysis. We now report that hexaniobate cluster-anions, [Nb 6 O 19 ] 8- , can arrest the growth of metal-oxide NCs and stabilize them as water-soluble complexes. This is exemplified by formation of hexaniobate-complexed 2.4-nm monoclinic-phase CuO NCs (1), whose ca. 350 Cu-atom cores feature quantum-confinement effects that impart an unprecedented ability to catalyze visible-light water oxidation with no added photosensitizers or applied potentials, and at rates exceeding those of hematite NCs. The findings point to polyoxoniobate-ligand entrapment as a potentially general method for harnessing the size-dependent properties of very small semiconductor NCs as the cores of versatile, entirely-inorganic complexes.
Keyphrases
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