Robust Synthesis of Gold‐Based Multishell Structures as Plasmonic Catalysts for Selective Hydrogenation of 4‐Nitrostyrene

A robust self‐template strategy is used for facile and large‐scale synthesis of porous multishell gold with controllable shell number, sphere size, and in situ surface modification. The process involved the rapid reduction of novel Au‐melamine colloidal templates with a great amount of NaBH₄ in presence of poly(sodium‐p‐styrenesulfonate) (PSS). After soaking the templates in other metal salt solution, the obtained bimetallic templates could also be generally converted into bimetallic multishell structures by same reduction process. In the hydrogenation of 4‐nitrostyrene using NH₃BH₃ as a reducing agent, the porous triple‐shell Au with surface modification (S‐PTSAu) exhibited excellent selectivity (97 %) for 4‐aminostyrene in contrast with unmodified triple‐shell Au. Furthermore, it also showed higher enhancement of catalytic activity under irradiation of visible light as compared to similar catalysts with fewer shells.