Probing Spatial Energy Flow in Plasmonic Catalysts from Charge Excitation to Heating: Nonhomogeneous Energy Distribution as a Fundamental Feature of Plasmonic Chemistry

Elias, Rachel C; Yan, Bill; Linic, Suljo

doi:10.1021/jacs.4c10395

The hybridization of plasmonic energy and charge donors with polymeric acceptors is a possible means to overcome fast internal relaxation that limits potential photocatalytic applications for plasmonic nanomaterials. Polyaniline (PANI) readily hybridizes onto gold nanorods (AuNRs) and has been used for the sensitive monitoring of local refractive index changes. Here, we use single-particle spectroscopy to quantify a previously unreported plasmon damping mechanism in AuNR–PANI hybrids while actively tuning the PANI chemical structure. By eliminating contributions from heterogeneous line width broadening and refractive index changes, we identify efficient resonance energy transfer (RET) between AuNRs and PANI. We find that RET dominates the optical response in our AuNR–PANI hybrids during the dynamic tuning of the spectral overlap of the AuNR donor and PANI acceptor. Harnessing RET between plasmonic nanomaterials and an affordable and processable polymer such as PANI offers an alternate mechanism toward efficient photocatalysis with plasmonic nanoparticle antennas. This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, copyright © The American Chemical Society 2023 after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpclett.3c01990

More Like this