Photochemical formation of silver and gold nanostructures at the air-water interface and their electrocatalytic properties

In this paper, we report a simple method of fabricating silver and gold nanostructures at the air - water interface, which can be spontaneously assembled through the reduction of AgNO3 and HAuCl4 with ultraviolet (UV) irradiation in the presence of polyacrylic acid (PAA), respectively. It was found that the building blocks in the silver nanostructure are mainly interwoven silver nanofilaments, while those of the gold nanostructure are mainly different sizes of gold nanoparticles and some truncated gold nanoplates, and even coalescence into networks. At the air - water interface, these silver and gold nanostructures can be easily transferred onto the surface of indium tin oxide (ITO) slides and used for electrochemical measurements. After a replacement reaction with H2PdCl4, the silver nanostructure is transformed into a Ag - Pd bimetallic nanostructure, with good electrocatalytic activity for O-2 reduction. The gold nanostructure can also show high electrocatalytic activity to the oxidation of nitric oxide (NO) with a detection limit of about 10 mu M NaNO2 at S/N = 3.