Plasmon resonance energy transfer and research progress in plasmon-enhanced photocatalysis

Abstract

Plasmon resonance energy transfer refers to the coherent energy transfer via dipole-dipole coupling from surface plasmons to adjacent exciton nanosystems such as semiconductor quantum dots or dye molecules. The plasmon resonance energy transfer is a non-radiative plasmon decay pathway, which can also act as an available channel to extract the plasmon-harvested energy. In addition, hot electron relaxation (non-radiative channel) and scattering (radiative channel) are also the dissipation pathways of surface plasmon resonances. The plasmon-harvested energy can be effectively transferred to other nanosystems or converted into other energy forms through these correlated dissipation pathways. In this paper, the underlying mechanism and dynamics of the plasmon resonance energy transfer as well as the related energy and charge transfer processes (such as near field enhancement and coupling, far field scattering, plasmon-induced hot electron transfer) are introduced. The recent research progress of the plasmon-enhanced photocatalysis by energy and charge transfer is reviewed.