Conversion of solar into chemical energy on plasmonic metal nanostructures

We will show that composite photo-catalysts combing plasmonic metallic nanoparticles of noble metals and semiconductor nanostructures exhibit improved photo-chemical activity compared to conventional photo-catalytic materials [1,2]. We will also show that plasmonic silver nanoparticles, optically excited with low intensity visible light, exhibit direct photo-catalytic activity in a number of oxidation reactions. We will discuss underlying mechanisms associated with these phenomena and predictive models that can capture the outcome of chemical transformations on these materials [2-4]. We propose that this new family of plasmonic metal photo-catalysts could prove useful for many heterogeneous catalytic processes that cannot be activated using conventional thermal processes on metals or photo-catalytic processes on semiconductors. I will show an example of such a process [5]. \\[4pt] [1] D. B. Ingram, S. Linic, \textbf{JACS,} 133, 5202, 2011.\\[0pt] [2] Suljo Linic, Phillip Christopher and David B., \textbf{Nature Materials,} \textbf{10}, 911, 2011.\\[0pt] [3] Ingram P. Christopher, H. Xin, S. Linic, \textbf{Nature Chemistry,} 3, 467, 2011.\\[0pt] [4] P. Christopher, H. Xin, M. Andiappan, S. Linic, \textbf{Nature Materials}, 11, 1044, 2012.\\[0pt] [5] M. Andiappan, J. Zhang, S. Linic, \textbf{Science,} 339, 1590, 2013