title: Plasmon enhanced solar-to-fuel energy conversion.
abstract: Future generations of photoelectrodes for solar fuel generation must employ inexpensive, earth-abundant absorber materials in order to provide a large-scale source of clean energy. These materials tend to have poor electrical transport properties and exhibit carrier diffusion lengths which are significantly shorter than the absorption depth of light. As a result, many photoexcited carriers are generated too far from a reactive surface and recombine instead of participating in solar-to-fuel conversion. We demonstrate that plasmonic resonances in metallic nanostructures and multilayer interference effects can be engineered to strongly concentrate sunlight close to the electrode/liquid interface, precisely where the relevant reactions take place. On comparison of spectral features in the enhanced photocurrent spectra to full-field electromagnetic simulations, the contribution of surface plasmon excitations is verified. These results open the door to the optimization of a wide variety of photochemical processes by leveraging the rapid advances in the field of plasmonics.
authors: Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials, 476 Lomita Mall, Stanford, California 94305-4045, United States. ithomann@stanford.edu
authors: Isabell
authors: I
authors: Thomann
authors: Blaise A
authors: BA
authors: Pinaud
authors: Zhebo
authors: Z
authors: Chen
authors: Bruce M
authors: BM
authors: Clemens
authors: Thomas F
authors: TF
authors: Jaramillo
authors: Mark L
authors: ML
authors: Brongersma