Elucidating the Sole Contribution from Electromagnetic Near‐Fields in Plasmon‐Enhanced Cu2O Photocathodes |
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Authors: | Joseph S DuChene Benjamin P Williams Aaron C Johnston‐Peck Jingjing Qiu Mathieu Gomes Maxime Amilhau Donald Bejleri Jiena Weng Dong Su Fengwei Huo Eric A Stach Wei David Wei |
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Institution: | 1. Department of Chemistry and Center for Nanostructured Electronic Materials, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA;2. Center for Functional Nanomaterials, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USA;3. Key Laboratory of Flexible Electronics and Institute of Advanced Materials, Jiangsu National Synergistic Innovation Center for Advanced Materials, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, P. R. China |
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Abstract: | Despite many promising reports of plasmon‐enhanced photocatalysis, the inability to identify the individual contributions from multiple enhancement mechanisms has delayed the development of general design rules for engineering efficient plasmonic photocatalysts. Herein, a plasmonic photocathode comprised of Au@SiO2 (core@shell) nanoparticles embedded within a Cu2O nanowire network is constructed to exclusively examine the contribution from one such mechanism: electromagnetic near‐field enhancement. The influence of the local electromagnetic field intensity is correlated with the overall light‐harvesting efficiency of the device through variation of the SiO2 shell thickness (5–22 nm) to systematically tailor the distance between the plasmonic Au nanoparticles and the Cu2O nanowires. A threefold increase in device photocurrent is achieved upon integrating the Au@SiO2 nanoparticles into the Cu2O nanowire network, further enabling a 40% reduction in semiconductor film thickness while maintaining photocathode performance. Photoelectrochemical results are further correlated with photoluminescence studies and optical simulations to confirm that the near‐field enhancement is the sole mechanism responsible for increased light absorption in the plasmonic photocathode. |
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Keywords: | cuprous oxide photoelectrochemistry solar energy conversion surface plasmon resonance |
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