Spectral Screening of the Energy of Hot Holes over a Particle Plasmon Resonance

Plasmonic hot carriers have been recently identified as key elements for photocatalysis at visible wavelengths. The possibility to transfer energy between metal plasmonic nanoparticles and nearby molecules depends not only on carrier generation and collection efficiencies but also on their energy at the metal-molecule interface. Here an energy screening study was performed by monitoring the aniline electro-polymerization reaction via an illuminated 80 nm gold nanoparticle. Our results show that plasmon excitation reduces the energy required to start the polymerization reaction as much as 0.24 eV. Three possible photocatalytic mechanisms were explored: the enhanced near field of the illuminated particle, the temperature increase at the metal-liquid interface, and the excited electron-hole pairs. This last phenomenon is found to be the one contributing most prominently to the observed energy reduction.