Nanowerk August 17, 2020
Plasmon-enabled light-harvesting technologies require a better understanding of their fundamental operating principles and current limitations. An international team of researchers (USA – Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Germany) investigated photoinduced electron transfer in a plasmonic model system composed of gold nanoparticles attached to a nanoporous film of TiO2. Using time-resolved X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy the researchers were able to count the numbers of transferred electrons. They found that only one in 1,000 photons generates an electron-hole pair and it takes less than a billionth of a second for the electron to come back from the titanium dioxide and recombine with the hole. The study may explain why some devices do not work as well as hoped. It also provides benchmarks for better future designs…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Abstract. Credit: J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2020, 11, 14, 5476–5481, June 16, 2020