Role of the Metal Oxide Electron Acceptor on Gold–Plasmon Hot-Carrier Dynamics and Its Implication to Photocatalysis and Photovoltaics

The recent discovery that metal nanoparticles can generate hot carriers upon light excitation is seen as a breakthrough in the fields of plasmonics and photonics. However, the high expectations for a plasmonic revolution in applications have been dampened by the ultrafast energy dissipation of surface plasmon polariton modes. While research aimed at suppressing loss mechanisms is still pursued, another research direction has emerged where charges are harnessed before they relax. Despite the effort, efficiencies of devices based on hot carriers harnessed from plasmonics are typically very low (a few percent), which is somehow paradoxical since efficiencies for electron injection efficiency have been reported to be in the range from 25% to 40% and hole injection up to 85%. This indicates that the low device performance relates to the undesirable charge back-transfer process, which happens in the picosecond time scale. In this context, we performed a comparative ultrafast spectroscopy investigation with gold nanoparticles in direct contact with different metal oxides, namely, TiO2, ZnO, SnO2, and Al:ZnO. Electron dynamics revealed the decisive role of metal/semiconductor interfaces and semiconductor electronic structure in electron injection efficiency and recombination, with significant implications to the fields of photocatalysis and photovoltaics.