Catalytic conversion of solar to chemical energy on plasmonic metal nanostructures

Aslam, Umar; Rao, Vishal Govind; Chavez, Steven; Linic, Suljo

doi:10.1038/s41929-018-0138-x

Cited by 703 publications

(754 citation statements)

References 99 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

744

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Among the several mechanisms that cause light absorption in metals, [ 16 ] interband transitions (IBTs) are single‐electron excitations [ 17 ] from occupied levels in one band to unoccupied levels in another band, [ 18 ] in contrast to the collectively coherent excitation of electrons for plasmonic absorption. [ 19 ] IBTs intrinsically have a broadband attribute because photons the energy of which surpasses the interband threshold of a metal can excite IBTs.…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

A Scalable Nickel–Cellulose Hybrid Metamaterial with Broadband Light Absorption for Efficient Solar Distillation

Yang

Dong

et al. 2020

Advanced Materials

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

absorbers have aroused great attention due to their resonant absorption and localized heating effect. [7][8][9] Nevertheless, this resonant absorption inherently features a narrow bandwidth, which is usually advantageous for applications such as biosensors [10] and resonant energy transfer, [11] but disadvantageous for broadband light absorption. [12,13] Some complex and delicate plasmonic metastructures were thus designed to hybridize proximate surface plasmons [12] or to support multiple resonances [13] in order to broaden the absorption bandwidth. However, the noble metals (i.e., Au and Ag) for plasmonic absorption along with the complicated fabrication procedures are undesirable for large-scale and full-spectrum (300-2500 nm) solar energy harvesting. [14] Zhou et al. creatively fabricated an all-aluminum hybrid plasmonic membrane, which was lowcost and enabled efficient broadband solar absorption. [15] The broadband plasmonic absorber was based on closely packed Al nanoparticles along the side walls of nanopores to induce a plasmon hybridization effect and high-density plasmonic resonances. [15] Among the several mechanisms that cause light absorption in metals, [16] interband transitions (IBTs) are single-electron excitations [17] from occupied levels in one band to unoccupied levels in another band, [18] in contrast to the collectively coherent excitation of electrons for plasmonic absorption. [19] IBTs intrinsically have a broadband attribute because photons the energy of which surpasses the interband threshold of a metal can excite IBTs. This makes IBTs very suitable for full-spectrum solar energy utilization, especially when massive IBTs over the entire solar spectrum can be supported by some transition metals (e.g., Ni, Pd, and Pt) with a high density of electronic states (DOS) near their Fermi levels. [20][21][22] In this work, we designed a Ni-cellulose hybrid metamaterial (NCM) that employs IBTs as the dominant optical absorption mechanism over the entire solar spectrum (Figures S1 and S2, and Note S1 for the detailed demonstration, Supporting Information). Nickel supports strong IBTs in very low energy regions (≈0.5 eV), which greatly increase optical absorption in the near-infrared spectrum compared to plasmonic metals (Au, Ag, and Cu). We densely embedded Ni nanoparticles into the nanogaps of cellulose microfibers via a seed-mediated and nanoconfined growth. This nanoconfinement effect can inhibit Sophisticated metastructures are usually required to broaden the inherently narrowband plasmonic absorption of light for applications such as solar desalination, photodetection, and thermoelectrics. Here, nonresonant nickel nanoparticles (diameters < 20 nm) are embedded into cellulose microfibers via a nanoconfinement effect, producing an intrinsically broadband metamaterial with 97.1% solar-weighted absorption. Interband transitions rather than plasmonic resonance dominate the optical absorption throughout the solar spectrum due to a high density of electronic states near the Fermi level of nickel. Fiel...

show abstract

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

A Scalable Nickel–Cellulose Hybrid Metamaterial with Broadband Light Absorption for Efficient Solar Distillation

Yang

Dong

et al. 2020

Advanced Materials

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In turn, the excess energy of these carriers may be dissipated within several picoseconds as heat. The extent to which these transient charges can be exploited to drive a chemical reaction in the adjacent medium is currently a very lively topic Optimization of the materials of construction for such systems requires the consideration of several factors. Certainly, generation of a strong plasmon requires capture of the photon by a low loss material like Ag or Au.…”

Section: Plasmonic Catalysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other particle shapes, especially gold nanorods, may also be suitable for hyperthermal medical applications 6)The concentration of light into a nanoscale volume may have uses in nanolithography, subdiffraction limit optical microscopy, and photocatalysis 7)The coupling of plasmonic nanostructures with semiconductors can enhance the efficiency of photovoltaic and photocatalytic devices …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Quest for Zero Loss: Unconventional Materials for Plasmonics

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

There has been an ongoing quest to optimize the materials used to build plasmonic devices: first the elements were investigated, then alloys and intermetallic compounds, later semiconductors were considered, and, most recently, there has been interest in using more exotic materials such as topological insulators and conducting oxides. The quality of the plasmon resonances in these materials is closely correlated with their structure and properties. In general gold and silver are the most commonly specified materials for these applications but they do have weaknesses. Here, it is shown how, in specific circumstances, the selection of certain other materials might be more useful. Candidate alternatives include TixN, VO2, Al, Cu, Al‐doped ZnO, and Cu–Al alloys. The relative merits of these choices and the many pitfalls and subtle problems that arise are discussed, and a frank perspective on the field is provided.

show abstract

“…The selective metal deposition is strongly dependent on the selection of proper surfactants. These complex nanostructures have potential applications in plasmon-enhanced catalysis [28], sensing [29] and biomedicine [16].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Regioselective metal deposition on polymer-Au nanoparticle hybrid chains

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Templated growth is an important synthetic strategy for the construction of complex multicomponent nanostructures [1][2][3]. The commonly-used templates can be made from either "hard" materials [4-7] (e.g., silica) or "soft" materials (e.g., micelles [8], polymers [9], supramolecules [10], etc.). Hard templates typically allow for good crystallinity of the final nanostructures and better preservation of the geometric feature of original templates [7,11], while soft templates are relatively easy to prepare and remove during the synthesis [12,13]. Recently, polymer-tethered inorganic nanoparticle (NP) assemblies (e.g., one-dimensional chains [14-17], two-dimensional sheets [18], and three-dimensional vesicles [19]) have attracted reasonable attention for their potential applications in diverse fields, such as bio-imaging and drug delivery [16] and surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) [20]. Furthermore, these polymer-inorganic NP assemblies can serve as a new class of mixed soft-hard colloidal template for the fabrication of unconventional nanostructures. For instance, Nie and co-authors [21] firstly synthesized a variety of coaxial-like and Saturn-like multicomponent nanostructures by selective deposition of metals (e.g., Pd, Pt, Ag, Ni, etc.) or metal oxides (e.g., CeO 2 and Cu 2 O) on seed Au NPs organized in polymer-Au NP assemblies, followed by dissociation of the assemblies. Nevertheless, there remains a challenge to precisely control the selective deposition of growth materials on the mixed soft-hard templates.In this paper, we report the regioselective deposition of metals on alternatively arranged polymer-Au NP hybrid chains (HCs). By varying the surfactants and hence thermodynamics of metal nucleation and growth, sec-ondary metals (e.g., Pt, Pd, Au, etc.) could be deposited either solely on the surface of Au NPs (hard templates) to produce alternatively-coated HCs (AHCs) or over the entire surface of HCs (both hard Au NPs and soft polymer domains) to form peapod-like HCs (PHCs) (Fig. 1a). The composition and position of metal coatings were found to drastically alter the optical response of the hybrid nanostructures. Both AHCs and PHCs with Pt shell led to the damping of the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). In contrast, homogeneous Au shell of PHCs exhibited a strong plasmon coupling between the inner Au NPs and outer shell, as confirmed by the finitedifference time-domain (FDTD) simulations. When used as SERS substrates, the Au-shelled PHCs showed significantly enhanced Raman signal which was 6.6 and 2.1 times higher than that of Pt-shelled PHCs and Pt-shelled AHCs, respectively.Polymer-Au NP HCs composed of Au NPs (~20 nm in diameter) and nanoscale polystyrene (PS) domains were prepared and transferred into aqueous solution according to our previous report [21] (see detailed procedures in Supplementary information (SI)). In brief, Au NPs were first surface-modified with thiol-terminated polystyrene (PS-SH, M n =12,000) and redispersed in dimethylformamide (DMF). A mixture solvent of DMF/wat...

show abstract

Catalytic conversion of solar to chemical energy on plasmonic metal nanostructures

Cited by 703 publications

References 99 publications

A Scalable Nickel–Cellulose Hybrid Metamaterial with Broadband Light Absorption for Efficient Solar Distillation

A Scalable Nickel–Cellulose Hybrid Metamaterial with Broadband Light Absorption for Efficient Solar Distillation

The Quest for Zero Loss: Unconventional Materials for Plasmonics

Regioselective metal deposition on polymer-Au nanoparticle hybrid chains

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About