Quantifying the role of surface plasmon excitation and hot carrier transport in plasmonic devices
Abstract
Abstract Harnessing photoexcited “hot” carriers in metallic nanostructures could define a new phase of non-equilibrium optoelectronics for photodetection and photocatalysis. Surface plasmons are considered pivotal for enabling efficient operation of hot carrier devices. Clarifying the fundamental role of plasmon excitation is therefore critical for exploiting their full potential. Here, we measure the internal quantum efficiency in photoexcited gold (Au)–gallium nitride (GaN) Schottky diodes to elucidate and quantify the distinct roles of surface plasmon excitation, hot carrier transport, and carrier injection in device performance. We show that plasmon excitation does not influence the electronic processes occurring within the hot carrier device. Instead, the metal band structure and carrier transport processes dictate the observed hot carrier photocurrent distribution. The excellent agreement with parameter-free calculations indicates that photoexcited electrons generated in ultra-thin Au nanostructures impinge ballistically on the Au–GaN interface, suggesting the possibility for hot carrier collection without substantial energy losses via thermalization.
- Authors:
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- California Institute of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1464991
- Alternate Identifier(s):
- OSTI ID: 1511489
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0004993; AC02-05CH11231
- Resource Type:
- Published Article
- Journal Name:
- Nature Communications
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Name: Nature Communications Journal Volume: 9 Journal Issue: 1; Journal ID: ISSN 2041-1723
- Publisher:
- Nature Publishing Group
- Country of Publication:
- United Kingdom
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS
Citation Formats
Tagliabue, Giulia, Jermyn, Adam S., Sundararaman, Ravishankar, Welch, Alex J., DuChene, Joseph S., Pala, Ragip, Davoyan, Artur R., Narang, Prineha, and Atwater, Harry A. Quantifying the role of surface plasmon excitation and hot carrier transport in plasmonic devices. United Kingdom: N. p., 2018.
Web. doi:10.1038/s41467-018-05968-x.
Tagliabue, Giulia, Jermyn, Adam S., Sundararaman, Ravishankar, Welch, Alex J., DuChene, Joseph S., Pala, Ragip, Davoyan, Artur R., Narang, Prineha, & Atwater, Harry A. Quantifying the role of surface plasmon excitation and hot carrier transport in plasmonic devices. United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05968-x
Tagliabue, Giulia, Jermyn, Adam S., Sundararaman, Ravishankar, Welch, Alex J., DuChene, Joseph S., Pala, Ragip, Davoyan, Artur R., Narang, Prineha, and Atwater, Harry A. Thu .
"Quantifying the role of surface plasmon excitation and hot carrier transport in plasmonic devices". United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05968-x.
@article{osti_1464991,
title = {Quantifying the role of surface plasmon excitation and hot carrier transport in plasmonic devices},
author = {Tagliabue, Giulia and Jermyn, Adam S. and Sundararaman, Ravishankar and Welch, Alex J. and DuChene, Joseph S. and Pala, Ragip and Davoyan, Artur R. and Narang, Prineha and Atwater, Harry A.},
abstractNote = {Abstract Harnessing photoexcited “hot” carriers in metallic nanostructures could define a new phase of non-equilibrium optoelectronics for photodetection and photocatalysis. Surface plasmons are considered pivotal for enabling efficient operation of hot carrier devices. Clarifying the fundamental role of plasmon excitation is therefore critical for exploiting their full potential. Here, we measure the internal quantum efficiency in photoexcited gold (Au)–gallium nitride (GaN) Schottky diodes to elucidate and quantify the distinct roles of surface plasmon excitation, hot carrier transport, and carrier injection in device performance. We show that plasmon excitation does not influence the electronic processes occurring within the hot carrier device. Instead, the metal band structure and carrier transport processes dictate the observed hot carrier photocurrent distribution. The excellent agreement with parameter-free calculations indicates that photoexcited electrons generated in ultra-thin Au nanostructures impinge ballistically on the Au–GaN interface, suggesting the possibility for hot carrier collection without substantial energy losses via thermalization.},
doi = {10.1038/s41467-018-05968-x},
journal = {Nature Communications},
number = 1,
volume = 9,
place = {United Kingdom},
year = {Thu Aug 23 00:00:00 EDT 2018},
month = {Thu Aug 23 00:00:00 EDT 2018}
}
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05968-x
Web of Science
Works referenced in this record:
Plasmon-induced hot carrier science and technology
journal, January 2015
- Brongersma, Mark L.; Halas, Naomi J.; Nordlander, Peter
- Nature Nanotechnology, Vol. 10, Issue 1
Vertically Aligned ZnO Nanorod Arrays Sentisized with Gold Nanoparticles for Schottky Barrier Photovoltaic Cells
journal, July 2009
- Chen, Z. H.; Tang, Y. B.; Liu, C. P.
- The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, Vol. 113, Issue 30
Distinguishing between plasmon-induced and photoexcited carriers in a device geometry
journal, July 2015
- Zheng, Bob Y.; Zhao, Hangqi; Manjavacas, Alejandro
- Nature Communications, Vol. 6, Issue 1
Quantification of Efficient Plasmonic Hot-Electron Injection in Gold Nanoparticle–TiO 2 Films
journal, September 2017
- Ratchford, Daniel C.; Dunkelberger, Adam D.; Vurgaftman, Igor
- Nano Letters, Vol. 17, Issue 10
Experimental and Ab Initio Ultrafast Carrier Dynamics in Plasmonic Nanoparticles
journal, February 2017
- Brown, Ana M.; Sundararaman, Ravishankar; Narang, Prineha
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 118, Issue 8
Hot Charge Carrier Transmission from Plasmonic Nanostructures
journal, May 2017
- Christopher, Phillip; Moskovits, Martin
- Annual Review of Physical Chemistry, Vol. 68, Issue 1
Plasmonics for improved photovoltaic devices
journal, February 2010
- Atwater, Harry A.; Polman, Albert
- Nature Materials, Vol. 9, Issue 3, p. 205-213
Fundamental Limitations to Plasmonic Hot-Carrier Solar Cells
journal, May 2016
- Zhang, Yu; Yam, ChiYung; Schatz, George C.
- The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, Vol. 7, Issue 10
Internal photoemission from plasmonic nanoparticles: comparison between surface and volume photoelectric effects
journal, January 2014
- Uskov, Alexander V.; Protsenko, Igor E.; Ikhsanov, Renat S.
- Nanoscale, Vol. 6, Issue 9
Plasmon Enhanced Internal Photoemission in Antenna-Spacer-Mirror Based Au/TiO 2 Nanostructures
journal, May 2015
- Fang, Yurui; Jiao, Yang; Xiong, Kunli
- Nano Letters, Vol. 15, Issue 6
Hot Hole Photoelectrochemistry on Au@SiO 2 @Au Nanoparticles
journal, April 2017
- Schlather, Andrea E.; Manjavacas, Alejandro; Lauchner, Adam
- The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, Vol. 8, Issue 9
Hot Carrier Extraction with Plasmonic Broadband Absorbers
journal, March 2016
- Ng, Charlene; Cadusch, Jasper J.; Dligatch, Svetlana
- ACS Nano, Vol. 10, Issue 4
Hot-Electron Photodetection with a Plasmonic Nanostripe Antenna
journal, February 2014
- Chalabi, Hamidreza; Schoen, David; Brongersma, Mark L.
- Nano Letters, Vol. 14, Issue 3
Direct observation of charge separation on Au localized surface plasmons
journal, January 2013
- Sá, Jacinto; Tagliabue, Giulia; Friedli, Peter
- Energy & Environmental Science, Vol. 6, Issue 12
Harvesting the loss: surface plasmon-based hot electron photodetection
journal, November 2016
- Li, Wei; Valentine, Jason G.
- Nanophotonics, Vol. 6, Issue 1
Plasmon-induced hot-electron generation at nanoparticle/metal-oxide interfaces for photovoltaic and photocatalytic devices
journal, January 2014
- Clavero, CĂ©sar
- Nature Photonics, Vol. 8, Issue 2
Visible-light-enhanced catalytic oxidation reactions on plasmonic silver nanostructures
journal, May 2011
- Christopher, Phillip; Xin, Hongliang; Linic, Suljo
- Nature Chemistry, Vol. 3, Issue 6
Theoretical predictions for hot-carrier generation from surface plasmon decay
journal, December 2014
- Sundararaman, Ravishankar; Narang, Prineha; Jermyn, Adam S.
- Nature Communications, Vol. 5, Issue 1
Efficient hot-electron transfer by a plasmon-induced interfacial charge-transfer transition
journal, August 2015
- Wu, K.; Chen, J.; McBride, J. R.
- Science, Vol. 349, Issue 6248
Optical Generation of Hot Plasmonic Carriers in Metal Nanocrystals: The Effects of Shape and Field Enhancement
journal, March 2014
- Zhang, Hui; Govorov, Alexander O.
- The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, Vol. 118, Issue 14
Enhanced generation and anisotropic Coulomb scattering of hot electrons in an ultra-broadband plasmonic nanopatch metasurface
journal, October 2017
- Sykes, Matthew E.; Stewart, Jon W.; Akselrod, Gleb M.
- Nature Communications, Vol. 8, Issue 1
Embedding Plasmonic Nanostructure Diodes Enhances Hot Electron Emission
journal, March 2013
- Knight, Mark W.; Wang, Yumin; Urban, Alexander S.
- Nano Letters, Vol. 13, Issue 4
Plasmonic hot carrier dynamics in solid-state and chemical systems for energy conversion
journal, January 2016
- Narang, Prineha; Sundararaman, Ravishankar; Atwater, Harry A.
- Nanophotonics, Vol. 5, Issue 1
Circularly polarized light detection with hot electrons in chiral plasmonic metamaterials
journal, September 2015
- Li, Wei; Coppens, Zachary J.; Besteiro, Lucas V.
- Nature Communications, Vol. 6, Issue 1
On the Application of Interference Phenomena to the Solution of Various Problems of Spectroscopy and Metrology
journal, February 1899
- Perot, A.; Fabry, Charles
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 9
Field and thermionic-field emission in Schottky barriers
journal, July 1966
- Padovani, F. A.; Stratton, R.
- Solid-State Electronics, Vol. 9, Issue 7
JDFTx: Software for joint density-functional theory
journal, January 2017
- Sundararaman, Ravishankar; Letchworth-Weaver, Kendra; Schwarz, Kathleen A.
- SoftwareX, Vol. 6
Plasmonic coupling at a metal/semiconductor interface
journal, November 2017
- Tan, Shijing; Argondizzo, Adam; Ren, Jindong
- Nature Photonics, Vol. 11, Issue 12
Plasmonic hot electron transport drives nano-localized chemistry
journal, March 2017
- Cortés, Emiliano; Xie, Wei; Cambiasso, Javier
- Nature Communications, Vol. 8, Issue 1
Plasmon-Induced Hot Carriers in Metallic Nanoparticles
journal, July 2014
- Manjavacas, Alejandro; Liu, Jun G.; Kulkarni, Vikram
- ACS Nano, Vol. 8, Issue 8
The Analysis of Photoelectric Sensitivity Curves for Clean Metals at Various Temperatures
journal, July 1931
- Fowler, R. H.
- Physical Review, Vol. 38, Issue 1, p. 45-56
Solar energy conversion via hot electron internal photoemission in metallic nanostructures: Efficiency estimates
journal, April 2014
- Leenheer, Andrew J.; Narang, Prineha; Lewis, Nathan S.
- Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 115, Issue 13
Plasmon-enhanced internal photoemission for photovoltaics: Theoretical efficiency limits
journal, August 2012
- White, Thomas P.; Catchpole, Kylie R.
- Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 101, Issue 7
Direct Plasmon-Driven Photoelectrocatalysis
journal, August 2015
- Robatjazi, Hossein; Bahauddin, Shah Mohammad; Doiron, Chloe
- Nano Letters, Vol. 15, Issue 9
Nonradiative Plasmon Decay and Hot Carrier Dynamics: Effects of Phonons, Surfaces, and Geometry
journal, December 2015
- Brown, Ana M.; Sundararaman, Ravishankar; Narang, Prineha
- ACS Nano, Vol. 10, Issue 1
Plasmon-induced photoelectrochemistry at metal nanoparticles supported on nanoporous TiO2
journal, January 2004
- Tian, Yang; Tatsuma, Tetsu
- Chemical Communications, Issue 16
Metamaterial Perfect Absorber Based Hot Electron Photodetection
journal, May 2014
- Li, Wei; Valentine, Jason
- Nano Letters, Vol. 14, Issue 6
Photochemical transformations on plasmonic metal nanoparticles
journal, May 2015
- Linic, Suljo; Aslam, Umar; Boerigter, Calvin
- Nature Materials, Vol. 14, Issue 6
Photodetection with Active Optical Antennas
journal, May 2011
- Knight, M. W.; Sobhani, H.; Nordlander, P.
- Science, Vol. 332, Issue 6030, p. 702-704
Ab initio phonon coupling and optical response of hot electrons in plasmonic metals
journal, August 2016
- Brown, Ana M.; Sundararaman, Ravishankar; Narang, Prineha
- Physical Review B, Vol. 94, Issue 7