Catalytic and SERS Properties of Gold and Silver Bimetallic Nanowires

Silver nanowire (AgNWs) is a typical precious metal nanowire with excellent electrical conductivity, light transmittance, and flexural resistance, which can be widely used in the fields of catalysis, optoelectronics, flexible display devices and biomedicine. We have prepared gold-silver bimetallic nanostructures based on AgNWs as templates and controlled gold nanoparticles coating on the surface of AgNWs by chemical reduction method. The catalytic efficacy of this gold-silver bimetallic nanowires (AuAg BNWs) for the hydroreduction of 4-nitrophenol to 4-aminophenol was analyzed using this nanostructure as a nanocatalyst. Due to the large number of small-sized gold nanoparticles on the surface of the nanostructure, it shows good catalytic activity, and the apparent rate constants and the turnover frequency reach 0.108- 1 min and 43.41 h- 1, respectively. In addition, the surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) properties of this AuAg BNWs structure were analyzed using crystal violet as a probe molecule. Because the plasmonic-enhanced localized electric field effect, the nanostructure also exhibited good SERS enhanced properties. Based on these studies, it is advantageous to the preparation of gold-silver bimetallic nanostructures and their applications in catalysis and SERS sensing.