What's so Hot About Electrons in Plasmonic Nanomaterials?

At the frontier between Physics and Material Science Engineering, plasmonic nanophotonics aims to explore realistic nanoparticles (NPs) designs for useful and soon-to-be quantum devices [1]. Optical properties of these plasmonic NPs strongly depend on their sizes, shapes, and composition [1,2]. Whereas plasmonic NPs have been used mainly in biotesting, quantum plasmonics applications are still in the early stage of development. For doing so, exploring the mechanisms of hot-electron generation is a crucial facet. Here, I will discuss the theoretical and numerical approaches to our recent joint computational/experimental efforts for developing such nano-optical devices in several representative nano-systems, such as chiral gold NPs [3], gold-silver NP trimers [4], aluminum NPs [5], and hexagonal boron nitride metastructures.

References

[1] Chen et al, Nature Reviews Physics 4, 113 (2022).

[2] Santiago et al, Materials Horizons 12, 4940 (2025).

[3] Gahlaut et al, Small, Early view 2505093 (2025).

[4] Li et al, ACS Nano 19, 28160 (2025).

[5] Martin et al, ACS Nano 19, 22343 (2025).