Polythiophene as a Double-Electrostatic Template for Zinc Oxide and Gold: Multicomponent Nano-Objects for Enhanced Photocatalysis.

Using electrostatic self-assembly and electrostatic nanotemplating, a quaternary nanostructured system consisting of zinc oxide nanoparticles, gold nanoparticles, poly[3-(potassium-4-butanoate)thiophene-2,5-diyl] (PT), and methyltrioctylammonium chloride (MTOA) (PT-MTOA-ZnO-Au) was designed for aqueous photocatalysis. The PT-MTOA hollow sphere aggregates served as an electrostatic template for both individual inorganic nanoparticles controlling their morphology, stabilizing the nanoparticles, and acting as a photosensitizer. The hybrid structures included spherical ZnO nanoparticles with a diameter of d = 2.6 nm and spherical Au nanoparticles with d = 6.0 nm embedded in PT-MTOA hollow spheres with a hydrodynamic radius of R H = 100 nm. The ZnO nanoparticles acted as the main catalyst, while the Au nanoparticles acted as the cocatalyst. As a photocatalytic model reaction, the dye degradation of methylene blue in aqueous solution using the full spectral range from UV to visible light was tested. The photocatalytic activity was optimized by varying the Zn and Au loading ratios and was substantially enhanced regarding the components; for example, it was increased by about 61% using PT-MTOA-ZnO-Au compared to the composite without gold particles. A photocatalytic mechanism of the methylene blue degradation was proposed when catalyzed by these multicomponent nano-objects. Thus, a simple procedure of templating two different nanoparticle species within the same cocatalytically active template has been demonstrated, which can be extended to other inorganic particles, making a variety of task-specific catalysts accessible.