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Dive into the research topics where Blake J. Plowman is active.

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Featured researches published by Blake J. Plowman.


Faraday Discussions | 2011

The active site behaviour of electrochemically synthesised gold nanomaterials.

Blake J. Plowman; Anthony P. O'Mullane; Suresh K. Bhargava

Even though gold is the noblest of metals, a weak chemisorber and is regarded as being quite inert, it demonstrates significant electrocatalytic activity in its nanostructured form. It is demonstrated here that nanostructured and even evaporated thin films of gold are covered with active sites which are responsible for such activity. The identification of these sites is demonstrated with conventional electrochemical techniques such as cyclic voltammetry as well as a large amplitude Fourier transformed alternating current (FT-ac) method under acidic and alkaline conditions. The latter technique is beneficial in determining if an electrode process is either Faradaic or capacitive in nature. The observed behaviour is analogous to that observed for activated gold electrodes whose surfaces have been severely disrupted by cathodic polarisation in the hydrogen evolution region. It is shown that significant electrochemical oxidation responses occur at discrete potential values well below that for the formation of the compact monolayer oxide of bulk gold and are attributed to the facile oxidation of surface active sites. Several electrocatalytic reactions are explored in which the onset potential is determined by the presence of such sites on the surface. Significantly, the facile oxidation of active sites is used to drive the electroless deposition of metals such as platinum, palladium and silver from their aqueous salts on the surface of gold nanostructures. The resultant surface decoration of gold with secondary metal nanoparticles not only indicates regions on the surface which are rich in active sites but also provides a method to form interesting bimetallic surfaces.


Gold Bulletin | 2014

Probing the surface oxidation of chemically synthesised gold nanospheres and nanorods

Blake J. Plowman; Nathan Thompson; Anthony P. O’Mullane

In this study, the electrochemical behaviour of commercially available gold spheres and rods stabilised by carboxylic acid and cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) moieties, respectively, are investigated. The cyclic voltammetric behaviour in acidic electrolyte is distinctly different with the nanorods exhibiting unusual oxidative behaviour due to an electrodissolution process. The nanospheres exhibited responses typical of a highly defective surface which significantly impacted on electrocatalytic activity. A repetitive potential cycling cleaning procedure was also investigated which did not improve the activity of the nanorods and resulted in deactivating the gold spheres due to decreasing the level of surface defects.


Faraday Discussions | 2013

Decoration of active sites to create bimetallic surfaces and its implication for electrochemical processes

Blake J. Plowman; Ilija Najdovski; Andrew Pearson; Anthony P. O'Mullane

The creation of electrocatalysts based on noble metals has received a significant amount of research interest due to their extensive use as fuel cell catalysts and electrochemical sensors. There have been many attempts to improve the activity of these metals through creating nanostructures, as well as post-synthesis treatments based on chemical, electrochemical, sonochemical and thermal approaches. In many instances these methods result in a material with active surface states, which can be considered to be adatoms or clusters of atoms on the surface that have a low lattice co-ordination number making them more prone to electrochemical oxidation at a wide range of potentials that are significantly less positive than those of their bulk metal counterparts. This phenomenon has been termed pre-monolayer oxidation and has been reported to occur on a range of metallic surfaces. In this work we present findings on the presence of active sites on Pd that has been: evaporated as a thin film; electrodeposited as nanostructures; as well as commercially available Pd nanoparticles supported on carbon. Significantly, advantage is taken of the low oxidation potential of these active sites whereby bimetallic surfaces are created by the spontaneous deposition of Ag from AgNO3 to generate Pd/Ag surfaces. Interestingly this approach does not increase the surface area of the original metal but has significant implications for its further use as an electrode material. It results in the inhibition or promotion of electrocatalytic activity which is highly dependent on the reaction of interest. As a general approach the decoration of active catalytic materials with less active metals for a particular reaction also opens up the possibility of investigating the role of the initially present active sites on the surface and identifying the degree to which they are responsible for electrocatalytic activity.


international conference on nanoscience and nanotechnology | 2010

Electrochemical formation of platinum nanostructures for fuel cell applications

Blake J. Plowman; Anthony P. O'Mullane; Samuel J. Ippolito; Vipul Bansal; Suresh K. Bhargava

We report the electrodeposition of platinum on evaporated gold substrates, which provides a method of synthesising surfaces which are active towards the oxidation of methanol. The inclusion of an inorganic growth direction agent is seen to provide a means of altering both the morphology of the deposits as well as their electrocatalytic behaviour.


Chemical Communications | 2015

Building with bubbles: the formation of high surface area honeycomb-like films via hydrogen bubble templated electrodeposition

Blake J. Plowman; Lathe A. Jones; Suresh K. Bhargava


Analyst | 2011

Electrochemical fabrication of metallic nanostructured electrodes for electroanalytical applications.

Blake J. Plowman; Suresh K. Bhargava; Anthony P. O'Mullane


Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics | 2013

Probing the effect of charge transfer enhancement in off resonance mode SERS via conjugation of the probe dye between silver nanoparticles and metal substrates

P. R. Selvakannan; Rajesh Ramanathan; Blake J. Plowman; Ylias Mohammad Sabri; Hemant Kumar Daima; Anthony P. O'Mullane; Vipul Bansal; Suresh K. Bhargava


Chemical Communications | 2009

Gold nanospikes formed through a simple electrochemical route with high electrocatalytic and surface enhanced Raman scattering activity

Blake J. Plowman; Samuel J. Ippolito; Vipul Bansal; Ylias M. Sabri; Anthony P. O’Mullane; Suresh K. Bhargava


ChemElectroChem | 2014

Exploiting the Facile Oxidation of Evaporated Gold Films to Drive Electroless Silver Deposition for the Creation of Bimetallic Au/Ag Surfaces

Blake J. Plowman; Matthew R. Field; Suresh K. Bhargava; Anthony P. O'Mullane


Science & Engineering Faculty | 2010

Honeycomb nanogold networks with highly active sites

Blake J. Plowman; Anthony P. O'Mullane; P. R. Selvakannan; Suresh K. Bhargava

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Anthony P. O'Mullane

Queensland University of Technology

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Anthony P. O’Mullane

Queensland University of Technology

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