A Unique Silk Mat-Like Structured Pd/CeO2 as an Efficient Visible Light Photocatalyst for Green Organic Transformation in Water

The charm embedded in nature is its inherent power to create a myriad of materials, for example, a spider web and lotus leaf, with ordinary composition but exhibiting fascinating functional property owing to their unique structures. Such intricate natural designs inspire immense research in synthesizing materials with controlled structure and morphology toward achieving novel or enhanced properties for target applications. Herein, we report a rotary vacuum evaporation and support-driven nanoassembly of tiny Pd noble metal particles on nanosized CeO2, which features a remarkable unique silk mat-like morphology with significant anti-aggregation of Pd nanoparticles during a high temperature calcination process, whereas the obvious aggregation phenomenon of Pd nanoparticles occurs when using commercial CeO2 as a support. This nanocomposite with unique structural and morphology composition is able to act as a highly selective and active visible light photocatalyst toward organic redox transformations in water, including aerobic oxidation of alcohols and anaerobic reduction of nitro-compounds under ambient conditions, representing a typical tenet of photo catalytic green chemistry.