Hot carrier generation in plasmonic nanoparticles.( Informal Seminar, notice the unusual time!)

DIPC Seminars

Speaker

Lucas Vazquez Besteiro, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, USA

When

2017/09/27
18:00

Place

Lecture Room of Building 1 at Donostia International Physics Center

Add to calendar

iCal

Subscribe to Newsletter

Materials with large numbers of free carriers, such as noble metals, support collective charge carrier oscillations when excited with electromagnetic radiation. The quanta of these excitations in the electron density are known as plasmons, and their study has offered a variety of applications within the broader discipline of Nanophotonics. Many of these applications are related to sensing, imaging and information processing, while others aim to use plasmonics as a means for enhancing light energy conversion processes. One such approach employs metal nanoparticles as antennas that strongly couple with electromagnetic radiation, to then use the absorbed energy to inject excited carriers into a neighboring system of interest, be it to produce photocurrents or to induce photocatalysis. These processes can occur because the plasmon dephases into a non-thermal charge carrier distribution, where a number of carriers are excited into high energy states (hot electrons or holes), allowing them to traverse the potential barrier that separates the metal from the target material. In this talk I will provide an overview of this phenomenon, with specific discussion around its theoretical description.