Synergistic effect in alloys and plasmonic effect have both been explored for increasing the efficiency of water splitting. In depth understanding and comparison of their respective contributions in certain promising systems is highly desired for catalyst development, yet rarely investigated so far. We report herein our thorough investigations on a series of highly interesting nanocomposites composed of Pt, Au and C₃N₄ nanocomponents, which are designed to benefit from both synergistic and plasmonic effects. Detailed analyses led to an important conclusion that the contribution from the synergistic effect was at least 3.5 times that from the plasmonic effect in the best performing sample, Pt₅₀Au₅₀ alloy decorated C₃N_4. It showed remarkable turnover frequency of >1.6 mmol h⁻¹ g⁻¹ at room temperature. Our work provides physical insights for catalyst development by rationally designing samples to compare long-known synergistic effect with recently emerging, attractive plasmonic effect and represents the first case study in the field.

中文翻译：

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致力于增强光催化氢的产生：合金协同效应或等离激元效应中哪个更重要？

为了提高水分解效率，已经探索了合金中的协同效应和等离激元效应。对于催化剂的开发，非常需要深入了解和比较它们各自在某些有前途的系统中的贡献，但迄今为止很少进行研究。我们在这里报告了我们对由Pt，Au和C ₃ N ₄纳米成分组成的一系列高度有趣的纳米复合材料的深入研究，这些纳米复合材料旨在从协同效应和等离子体效应中受益。详细的分析得出一个重要的结论，即在性能最佳的Pt ₅₀ Au ₅₀合金装饰的C ₃样品中，协同效应的贡献至少是等离子体效应的3.5倍。N _4.在室温下显示出显着的周转频率> 1.6 mmol h ^-1  g ^-1。我们的工作通过合理地设计样品，将长期已知的协同效应与最近出现的有吸引力的等离激元效应进行比较，为催化剂的开发提供了物理见解，并代表了该领域的第一个案例研究。