Search

Alloyed metal nanoparticles are a promising platform for plasmonically enabled hot-carrier generation, which can be used to drive photochemical reactions. Although the non-plasmonic component in these systems has been investigated for its potential to enhance catalytic activity, its capacity to affect the photochemical process favorably has been underexplored by comparison. Here, we study the impact of surface alloy species and concentration on hot-carrier generation in Ag nanoparticles. By first-principles simulations, we photoexcite the localized surface plasmon, allow it to dephase, and calculate spatially and energetically resolved hot-carrier distributions. We show that the presence of non-noble species in the topmost surface layer drastically enhances hot-hole generation at the surface at the expense of hot-hole generation in the bulk, due to the additional d-type states that are introduced to the surface. The energy of the generated holes can be tuned by choice of the alloyant, with systematic trends across the d-band block. Already low surface alloy concentrations have a large impact, with a saturation of the enhancement effect typically close to 75% of a monolayer. Hot-electron generation at the surface is hindered slightly by alloying, but here a judicious choice of the alloy composition allows one to strike a balance between hot electrons and holes. Our work underscores the promise of utilizing multicomponent nanoparticles to achieve enhanced control over plasmonic catalysis and provides guidelines for how hot-carrier distributions can be tailored by designing the electronic structure of the surface through alloying.

Bimetallic nanostructures combining plasmonic and catalytic metals are promising for tailoring and enhancing plasmonic hot-carrier generation utilized in plasmonic catalysis. In this work, we study the plasmonic hot-carrier generation in noble metal nanoparticles (Ag, Au, and Cu) with single-atom dopants (Ag, Au, Cu, Pd, and Pt) with first-principles time-dependent density functional theory calculations. Our results show that the local hot-carrier generation at the dopant atom is greatly altered by the dopant element while the plasmonic response of the nanoparticle as a whole is not significantly affected. In particular, hot holes at the dopant atom originate from the discrete d-electron states of the dopant, and the energies of these d-electron states and hence those of the hot holes depend on the dopant element, which opens up the possibility to tune hot-carrier generation with suitable dopants.

Metal nanoparticles are attractive for plasmon-enhanced generation of hot carriers, which may be harnessed in photochemical reactions. In this work, we analyze the coherent femtosecond dynamics of photon absorption, plasmon formation, and subsequent hot-carrier generation through plasmon dephasing using first-principles simulations. We predict the energetic and spatial hot-carrier distributions in small metal nanoparticles and show that the distribution of hot electrons is very sensitive to the local structure. Our results show that surface sites exhibit enhanced hot-electron generation in comparison to the bulk of the nanoparticle. Although the details of the distribution depend on particle size and shape, as a general trend, lower-coordinated surface sites such as corners, edges, and {100} facets exhibit a higher proportion of hot electrons than higher-coordinated surface sites such as {111} facets or the core sites. The present results thereby demonstrate how hot carriers could be tailored by careful design of atomic-scale structures in nanoscale systems.

Features of the surface plasmon from macroscopic materials emerge in molecular systems, but differentiating collective excitations from single-particle excitations in molecular systems remains elusive. The rich interactions between single-particle electron–hole and collective electron excitations produce phenomena related to the chemical physics aspects within the atomic array. We study the plasmonic properties of atomic arrays of noble (Au, Ag, and Cu) and transition-metal (Pd, Pt) homonuclear chains using time-dependent density functional theory and their Kohn–Sham transition contributions. The response to the electromagnetic radiation is related to both the geometry-dependent confinement of sp-valence electrons and the energy position of d-electrons in the different atomic species and the hybridization between d and sp electrons. It is possible to tune the position of the plasmon resonance, split it into several peaks, and eventually achieve broadband absorption of radiation. Arrays of mixed noble and transition-metal chains may have strongly attenuated plasmonic behavior. The collective nature of the excitations is ascertained using their Kohn–Sham transition contributions. To manipulate the plasmonic response and achieve the desired properties for broad applications, it is vital to understand the origins of these phenomena in atomic chains and their arrays.

Plasmon-induced hot-carrier transfer from a metal nanostructure to an acceptor is known to occur viatwo key mechanisms: (i) indirect transfer, where the hot carriers are produced in the metal nanostructure and subsequently transferred to the acceptor, and (ii) direct transfer, where the plasmons decay by directly exciting carriers from the metal to the acceptor. Unfortunately, an atomic-level understanding of the direct-transfer process, especially with regard to its quantification, remains elusive even though it is estimated to be more efficient compared to the indirect-transfer process. This is due to experimental challenges in separating direct from indirect transfer as both processes occur simultaneously at femtosecond time scales. Here, we employ time-dependent density-functional theory simulations to isolate and study the direct-transfer process at a model metal–acceptor (Ag147–Cd33Se33) interface. Our simulations show that, for a 10 fs Gaussian laser pulse tuned to the plasmon frequency, the plasmon formed in the Ag147–Cd33Se33system decays within 10 fs and induces the direct transfer with a probability of about 40%. We decompose the direct-transfer process further and demonstrate that the direct injection of both electrons and holes into the acceptor, termed direct hot-electron transfer (DHET) and direct hot-hole transfer (DHHT), takes place with similar probabilities of about 20% each. Finally, effective strategies to control and tune the probabilities of DHET and DHHT processes are proposed. We envision our work to provide guidelines toward the design of metal–acceptor interfaces that enable more efficient plasmonic hot-carrier devices.

Electronic excitations can be efficiently analyzed in terms of the underlying Kohn–Sham (KS) electron–hole transitions. While such a decomposition is readily available in the linear-response time-dependent density-functional theory (TDDFT) approaches based on the Casida equations, a comparable analysis is less commonly conducted within the real-time-propagation TDDFT (RT-TDDFT). To improve this situation, we present here an implementation of a KS decomposition tool within the local-basis-set RT-TDDFT code in the free GPAW package. Our implementation is based on postprocessing of data that is readily available during time propagation, which is important for retaining the efficiency of the underlying RT-TDDFT to large systems. After benchmarking our implementation on small benzene derivatives by explicitly reconstructing the Casida eigenvectors from RT-TDDFT, we demonstrate the performance of the method by analyzing the plasmon resonances of icosahedral silver nanoparticles up to Ag561. The method provides a clear description of the splitting of the plasmon in small nanoparticles due to individual single-electron transitions as well as the formation of a distinct d-electron-screened plasmon resonance in larger nanoparticles.

While direct hot-carrier transfer can increase photocatalytic activity, it is difficult to discern experimentally and competes with several other mechanisms. To shed light on these aspects, here, we model from first-principles hot-carrier generation across the interface between plasmonic nanoparticles and a CO molecule. The hot-electron transfer probability depends nonmonotonically on the nanoparticle–molecule distance and can be effective at long distances, even before a strong chemical bond can form; hot-hole transfer on the other hand is limited to shorter distances. These observations can be explained by the energetic alignment between molecular and nanoparticle states as well as the excitation frequency. The hybridization of the molecular orbitals is the key predictor for hot-carrier transfer in these systems, emphasizing the necessity of ground state hybridization for accurate predictions. Finally, we show a nontrivial dependence of the hot-carrier distribution on the excitation energy, which could be exploited when optimizing photocatalytic systems.