Hot-electrons: Faraday Discussion

Over the last 10 years, the field of plasmonic research has emerged as an extremely promising technology with several main fields of application: information technologies, energy, high-density data storage, photovoltaics, chemistry, biology, medicine and security. One of the most prominent applications, bridging the physical, chemical and biomedical sciences, has been in the area of sensing, where the intense nanoscale light fields around metallic nanostructures have been utilized for surface-enhanced spectroscopies of molecules.

While up to a few years ago the main focus has been on the ability of plasmonic nanostructures to generate such localized regions of highly concentrated electromagnetic fields, more recently it has been realized that also the electron part of plasmonic excitations can be exploited in the physical and chemical sciences: when a plasmon decays, its energy gets transferred to an electron/hole pair, and for a short period, below one picosecond, these carriers stay “hot” — they are in a non-equilibrium energy distribution, that can be exploited if these carriers can be extracted from the plasmonic nanostructures before thermalization to the lattice occurs. Proof-of-concept applications have over the last three years shown fascinating applications in areas such as surface-enhanced catalysis (water splitting), photodetectors without bandgaps (Schottky juntions), and nanoscale control over chemical reactions. At the same time, theoretical understanding about the generation, transport and extraction of plasmonic hot carriers has also advanced. The recent progress and the addressing of the main challenging questions in this dynamic field, spanning the experimental and theoretical sciences in physics and chemistry are the topic of this exciting Faraday Discussion.

The event will run from the 18th-20th February 2019 and will be chaired by Professor Anatoly Zayats from King’s College London and Stefan Maierfrom Imperial College London .

You can read more about the event at the Royal Society for Chemistry website.

To learn more about Faraday Discussions  you can watch the film below.