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The development of nanoscale heterostructure photocatalysts for the effective, direct utilization of visible light (400-750 nm, ~44% of solar spectrum) to drive important chemical conversions is a prime research area in the field of photocatalysis. Particles at nanoscale dimensions have a large surface area-to-volume ratio, expose a high number of active surface sites, and exhibit unique electronic properties (different from bulk) that are beneficial for improving the overall catalytic activity. However, the advantages of size reduction are often overshadowed by the low optical absorption (as absorption power  size3) and colloidal instability (extensive aggregation) of particles at the nanoscale. In this dissertation, we demonstrate a strategy to improve the colloidal stability and enhance the optical absorption of nano-sized semiconductor and metal nanoparticles (NPs) that exhibit weak visible light absorption. The colloidal, free-standing NPs are placed on transparent, dielectric silica nanospheres (SiOx NSs) that act as optical antenna supports, forming SiOx/NP composite nanostructures. The spherical morphology of SiOx enables scattering resonances (Fabry Perot or Whispering Gallery Modes) which enhances the local electric field on or near the surface of the NS. The NPs placed on the surface of SiOx NS interact with the locally enhanced electric field and exhibit improved optical absorption. By varying the size of the SiOx NS, the resonance wavelengths and the intensity of the local electric field enhancement can be tuned, offering the ability of such structures to effectively utilize a wide range of energies in the visible region. Composite nanostructures comprised of various classes of nanomaterials such as metal-doped semiconductor, plasmonic, and non-plasmonic metal NPs were investigated to perform the desirable solar-to-chemical transformations. First, we employed SiOx-loaded silver-doped silver chloride (SiOx/AgCl(Ag)) photocatalyst to investigate the role of metal-induced gap states in AgCl, a wide bandgap semiconductor. SiOx/AgCl(Ag) exhibit high catalytic performance and photostability after 10 cycles of the probe reaction, methylene blue (MB) degradation under visible light irradiation. The results indicate that the visible light absorption due to metal-induced gap states can be further improved by employing the SiOx NSs as supports that act as optical nanoantenna. We then studied the influence of NP size on the catalytic activity to understand the effect of size in promoting the generation and transfer of hot electrons to surface adsorbates. Our findings indicate that upon employing Ag NPs of different particle size (<10 nm and >10 nm) and normalizing for the optical absorption and moles of surface Ag atoms, the efficient generation and transfer of photoexcited hot electrons is favored in the small-sized Ag NPs (size <10 nm) than bigger Ag NPs. Next, we investigated the selective partial hydrogenation of nitroarene to N-aryl hydroxylamine using SiOx-loaded platinum (SiOx/Pt) photocatalysts. We found that change in the surface electronic structure of the small Pt NPs (size <5 nm) due to light illumination and surface modification (by adding suitable organic ligands), minimize the adsorption of the electron-rich hydroxylamine molecules and minimize their complete conversion to aniline, resulting in high N-hydroxylamine selectivity. Overall, our work shows that well-controlled composite nanostructures comprising of active catalyst loaded on dielectric SiOx NS supports that act as optical nanoantenna are a promising class of photocatalysts for driving photon-to-chemical transformations with high activity and product selectivity. / Chemistry

Le domaine de la science des matériaux et plus particulièrement celui des matériaux hybrides suscite un intérêt croissant en raison de leurs nombreuses applications. Dans ce travail, deux stratégies synthétiques ont été considérées pour la synthèse de matériaux hybrides.Dans une première partie, nous nous sommes intéressés à une approche de synthèse directe en faisant réagir des ligands organiques de type oligophénylène avec de l’isopropoxyde de titane. Malheureusement, ces réactions ont conduit à la précipitation de solides amorphes ne permettant pas la caractérisation de ces produits.Dans une seconde partie, une approche de synthèse séquentielle qui consiste à synthétiser un objet précondensé pouvant s’auto-Assembler dans un second temps avec des ligands organiques a été proposée. Cette approche nous a conduits à synthétiser une nouvelle brique de formule Ti10O12(cat)8(pyr)8 et de trois dérivés de formules analogues Ti10O12(cat)8(pyr’)8 (pyr’ = pyridines substituées) obtenus par échange de ligands. Ces complexes, qui présentent des propriétés d’absorption dans le visible, ont été étudiés par spectroscopie d’absorption UV-Vis et grâce à des calculs théoriques. Puis nous avons utilisé le motif [Ti10O12(cat)8] pour générer des matériaux hybrides via des substitutions de ligands par des molécules polytopiques comme la 4,4’-Bipyridine et la poly(4-Vinylpyridine). / In the field of materials science, hybrid materials are of crucial importance due to their numerous applications. In this work, two strategies were considered to synthesize such hybrid materials.In a first part, we have tackled a one step synthetic approach by reacting resorcinol-Based oligophenylene organic ligands with titanium isopropoxide. Unfortunately, these reactions led to amorphous solids and no further structural information concerning these precipitates was obtained.In a second part, we have described a sequential approach which first concerns the preparation of pre-Ordered systems that are, in a second step, self-Assembled with organic linkers. Thus, our approach deals with the preparation of a new building block formulated as Ti10O12(cat)8(pyr)8 and three derivatives formulated as Ti10O12(cat)8(pyr’)8 (pyr’ = substituted pyridine) obtained by ligands exchange. These complexes exhibit visible light absorption properties that were studied through UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy and theoretical calculations. Then, the [Ti10O12(cat)8] motif was used to generate hybrid materials via ligands substitutions with polytopic ligands such as 4,4’-Bipyridine and poly(4-Vinylpyridine).