title: Coupling Solar Energy into Reactions: Materials Design for Surface Plasmon-Mediated Catalysis.
abstract: Enabled by surface plasmons, noble metal nanostructures can interact with and harvest incident light. As such, they may serve as unique media to generate heat, supply energetic electrons, and provide strong local electromagnetic fields for chemical reactions through different mechanisms. This solar-to-chemical pathway provides a new approach to solar energy utilization, alternative to conventional semiconductor-based photocatalysis. To provide readers with a clear picture of this newly recognized process, this review presents coupling solar energy into chemical reactions through plasmonic nanostructures. It starts with a brief introduction of surface plasmons in metallic nanostructures, followed by a demonstration of tuning plasmonic features by tailoring their physical parameters. Owing to their tunable plasmonic properties, metallic materials offer a platform to trigger and drive chemical reactions at the nanoscale, as systematically overviewed in this article. The design rules for plasmonic materials for catalytic applications are further outlined based on existing examples. At the end of this article, the challenges and opportunities for further development of plasmonic-mediated catalysis toward energy and environmental applications are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, iChEM (Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials), School of Chemistry and Materials Science, and National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, PR China.
authors.forename: Ran
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Long
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, iChEM (Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials), School of Chemistry and Materials Science, and National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, PR China.
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, iChEM (Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials), School of Chemistry and Materials Science, and National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, PR China.
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, iChEM (Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials), School of Chemistry and Materials Science, and National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, PR China.
authors.forename: Yujie
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xiong
keywords: catalysis; energy conversion; nanocrystals; noble metals; plasmonics