(472b) Factors Governing Site Specific Rates of Electronic Excitations in Multicomponent Plasmonic Materials

The decay of localized surface plasmons supported by plasmonic metal nanoparticles results in the formation of energetic charge carriers within the nanoparticles. These energetic charge carriers can then be extracted from the plasmonic material and transferred to other materials (e.g. metals, semiconductors, or molecules) that can then perform a function. The efficient extraction and exploitation of these charge carriers in various applications can be significantly improved by designing multicomponent plasmonic nanostructures with highly localized charge carrier generation rates in the non-plasmonic component. In this contribution, we use experimental and computational studies of core–shell metal–metal, metal–semiconductor and metal–molecule systems to investigate the mechanism of energetic charge carrier generation in multicomponent plasmonic systems [1,2,3]. We reveal that the rates of plasmon decay through the generation of energetic charge carriers are governed by two factors: (1) the intensity of the confined plasmon induced electric fields at the surface of the plasmonic nanostructure, and (2) the availability of direct, momentum conserved electronic excitations in the material located where the electric fields are high. We use these studies to propose a unifying physical framework that leads us towards molecular control of excited charge carrier generation in all multicomponent plasmonic systems.

References

1. Aslam, U., Chavez, S. & Linic, S., Nature Nanotechnol. 12, 1000–1005 (2017).
2. Chavez, S., Aslam, U., & Linic, S., ACS Energy Letters. 3, 1590-1596 (2018).
3. Chavez, S., Govind Rao, V., & Linic, S., Faraday Discussions. Pre-print. (2019).