Solar-driven plasmonic tungsten oxides as catalyst enhancing ethanol dehydration for highly selective ethylene production

Non-metallic plasmonic materials, as alternatives to costly noble metals, have drawn numerous attention owning to their unique localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) effect. Herein, we report non-metallic plasmonic tungsten oxide (WO3-x) nanowire bundles with abundant oxygen vacancy (OVs) that gives efficient activity for ethylene production from ethanol dehydration under full spectrum light irradiation. A remarkable ethylene generation rate of 16.9 mmol g(-1) h(-1) was achieved with high selectivity (94.9 %) over the WO3-x-5 nanowires with maximum oxygen vacancies, which was 16 times higher than 1.0 mmol g(-1) h(-1) (selectivity of 90.5 %) of WO3-x-20 nanoplates with low oxygen vacancies. Such impressive performance is ascribed to the synergistic effect of plasmonic hot electrons and photothermal effect. This work is expected to provide new insights on photo-induced ethanol dehydration for highly selective ethylene production.