title: Manipulation of charge transfer and transport in plasmonic-ferroelectric hybrids for photoelectrochemical applications.
abstract: Utilizing plasmonic nanostructures for efficient and flexible conversion of solar energy into electricity or fuel presents a new paradigm in photovoltaics and photoelectrochemistry research. In a conventional photoelectrochemical cell, consisting of a plasmonic structure in contact with a semiconductor, the type of photoelectrochemical reaction is determined by the band bending at the semiconductor/electrolyte interface. The nature of the reaction is thus hard to tune. Here instead of using a semiconductor, we employed a ferroelectric material, Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 (PZT). By depositing gold nanoparticle arrays and PZT films on ITO substrates, and studying the photocurrent as well as the femtosecond transient absorbance in different configurations, we demonstrate an effective charge transfer between the nanoparticle array and PZT. Most importantly, we show that the photocurrent can be tuned by nearly an order of magnitude when changing the ferroelectric polarization in PZT, demonstrating a versatile and tunable system for energy harvesting.
authors.affiliation: Institut für Physik &IMN MacroNano (ZIK), Technische Universität Ilmenau, 98693 Ilmenau, Germany.|Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials Science, Institute of Semiconductors, CAS, 100083 Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Zhijie
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Institut für Physik &IMN MacroNano (ZIK), Technische Universität Ilmenau, 98693 Ilmenau, Germany.
authors.forename: Dawei
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.affiliation: Institut für Physik &IMN MacroNano (ZIK), Technische Universität Ilmenau, 98693 Ilmenau, Germany.
authors.forename: Liaoyong
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wen
authors.affiliation: Institut für Physik &IMN MacroNano (ZIK), Technische Universität Ilmenau, 98693 Ilmenau, Germany.
authors.forename: Rui
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Physics Department, University of Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany.|Institute of Physics, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, 55128 Mainz, Germany.
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Obergfell
authors.affiliation: Institut für Physik &IMN MacroNano (ZIK), Technische Universität Ilmenau, 98693 Ilmenau, Germany.
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Mi
authors.affiliation: Institut für Physik &IMN MacroNano (ZIK), Technische Universität Ilmenau, 98693 Ilmenau, Germany.
authors.forename: Zhibing
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhan
authors.affiliation: Institut für Physik &IMN MacroNano (ZIK), Technische Universität Ilmenau, 98693 Ilmenau, Germany.
authors.forename: Nasori
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Nasori
authors.affiliation: Institut für Physik &IMN MacroNano (ZIK), Technische Universität Ilmenau, 98693 Ilmenau, Germany.|Institute of Physics, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, 55128 Mainz, Germany.
authors.forename: Jure
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Demsar
authors.affiliation: Institut für Physik &IMN MacroNano (ZIK), Technische Universität Ilmenau, 98693 Ilmenau, Germany.
authors.forename: Yong
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5048-7433
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lei