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Plasmon-Induced Hot Electrons in Metallic Nanoparticles

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Plasmon-enhanced light-matter interactions

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Nanoscale Science and Technology ((LNNST,volume 31))

Abstract

Plasmon-induced hot electrons have attracted much recent attention due to its promising potential in photocatalysis and other light harvesting applications. Surface plasmon of metal nanoparticles decays nonradiatively to generate energetic electrons, referred to as hot electrons. Since hot electrons can be transferred to a chemically attached acceptor, this process is potentially useful for technological applications. Plasmon-induced hot-electron transfer is known to occur via two key mechanisms: indirect transfer and direct transfer. For hot-electron-driven catalysis, the energy of hot electrons needs to overlap with the unoccupied orbitals of the reactant, and the particular chemical channel can be selectively enhanced by controlling the energy distribution of hot electrons. High-energy hot electrons generated by plasmon decay also could contribute to nonlinear responses, which is essential for fundamental understanding of the optical nonlinearity associated with quantum and nonlocal effects on the atomic level. This chapter focuses on the recent advances in the understanding of plasmon-induced hot electrons and highlights its application in photocatalysis.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2020YFA0211300), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 92050112, 12074237 and 12004233), and the Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities (GK201701008).

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  1. School of Physics and Information Technology, Shaanxi Normal University, **’an, China

    Lei Yan, Zhengkun Fu & Zhenglong Zhang

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  1. Lei Yan
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  2. Zhengkun Fu
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Correspondence to Lei Yan .

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  1. College of Optoelectronic Technology Chengdu University of Information Technology, Chengdu, China

    Peng Yu

  2. School of Physics and Technology, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Hongxing Xu

  3. University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China

    Zhiming M. Wang

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Yan, L., Fu, Z., Zhang, Z. (2022). Plasmon-Induced Hot Electrons in Metallic Nanoparticles. In: Yu, P., Xu, H., Wang, Z.M. (eds) Plasmon-enhanced light-matter interactions. Lecture Notes in Nanoscale Science and Technology, vol 31. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87544-2_7

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