Surface-Plasmon-Driven Hot Electron Photochemistry

Abstract

Visible-light-driven photochemistry has continued to attract heightened interest due to its capacity to efficiently harvest solar energy and its potential to solve the global energy crisis. Plasmonic nanostructures boast broadly tunable optical properties coupled with catalytically active surfaces that offer a unique opportunity for solar photochemistry. Resonant optical excitation of surface plasmons produces energetic hot electrons that can be collected to facilitate chemical reactions. This review sums up recent theoretical and experimental approaches for understanding the underlying photophysical processes in hot electron generation and discusses various electron-transfer models on both plasmonic metal nanostructures and plasmonic metal/semiconductor heterostructures. Following that are highlights of recent examples of plasmon-driven hot electron photochemical reactions within the context of both cases. The review concludes with a discussion about the remaining challenges in the field and future opportunities for addressing the low reaction efficiencies in hot-electron-induced photochemistry.

From active plasmonic devices to plasmonic molecular electronics

“…Light absorption in the metallic nanostructures results in the creation of a great number of ‘hot carriers’ . The production of hot charge carriers from plasmonic nanostructures has been recently reviewed . The usual method consists in illuminating a plasmonic nanostructure at the LSPR frequency.…”

Hot Charge Carriers in Quantum Dots: Generation, Relaxation, Extraction, and Applications

“…[14,17,18,35–37] Largely solar energy serve as the excitation source for this purpose, but the major limitation associated with this method is the restricted coverage of high energy photons in solar spectrum. This imposes a constraint on hot charge carrier generation and the efforts are being taken to produce hot charge carriers without using high‐energy photons . In this line, one of the way is proposed by Dong et al .…”

Enhanced Electrocatalysis via Boosted Separation of Hot Charge Carriers of Plasmonic Gold Nanoparticles Deposited on Reduced Graphene Oxide

“…[1][2][3][4] The LSPR of plasmonic nanostructures can be visualized as an electromagnetic field coupled to the coherent oscillation of all conduction electrons. The interaction of incident light with the metallic surface can excite resonant collective oscillations of conduction electrons of noble metal nanoparticles.…”