Promoting Pd-catalyzed Suzuki coupling reactions through near-infrared plasmon excitation of WO3-x nanowires

We have prepared Pd-loaded plasmonic WO3-x nanowires with retained strong plasmon absorption in the visible and NIR region, and demonstrated that the plasmon excitation of WO3-x nanowires by long wavelength irradiation can greatly promote Suzuki coupling reactions catalyzed by the attached Pd nanoparticles in terms of the main product yield and selectivity, which is attributed to the photothermal effect with strong localized plasmon heating on the WO3-x nanowire surface. Our studies reveal that the contributions of plasmon excitation can not only affect the reactions directly involving the plasmonic structure itself, but also assist the reactions catalyzed by the third-part materials attached on the plasmonic structure surface. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.