Unveiling the role of chemical and electronic structure in plasmon-assisted homolysis of alkoxyamines

The excitation of localized plasmon resonance on nanoparticles followed by the interaction with organic molecules leads to new pathways of chemical reactions. Although a number of physical factors (temperature, illumination regime, type of nanoparticles, etc.) are affecting this process, the role of the chemical factors is underestimated. Challenging this assumption, here we studied the kinetic of plasmon-induced homolysis of five alkoxyamines (AAs) with different chemical and electronic structures using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR). The kinetic data revealed the dependence of plasmonic homolysis rate constant (kd) with the HOMO energy of AAs, which cannot be described by the kinetic parameters derived from thermal homolysis experiments. The observed trend in kd allowed to suggest the key role of intramolecular excitation mechanism supported by the TDFDT calculations, additional spectroscopic characterization, and control experiments. Our work sheds light on the role of the electronic structure of organic molecules in plasmonic chemistry.