Date: 28.01.2022, Time: 15:30h

Dr. Lucas V. Besteiro, Universidade de Vigo Spain

Conducting nanostructured materials can couple with light and support excited modes in which the mobile electros in their conduction band oscillate coherently. The highly-tunable resonant modes of those forced oscillations—known as plasmons—greatly enhance the local electric field inside and near the nanostructure, resulting also in large light-matter interaction cross sections. Importantly, the energy deposited in these modes is transferred to the environment as the coherent oscillation dephases, so that they can affect secondary phenomena. A significant channel available for this transfer is the injection of excited electrons or holes, as they can contribute to redox reactions around the nanostructure, resulting in the plasmonic nanomaterial functioning as an active component in a photocatalytic setup.

This talk will present a theoretical perspective of the internal carrier dynamics in excited plasmonic nanostructures, contextualized in the study of these materials to advance the state-of-the-art in photocatalysis, and contrasting different physical mechanisms underlying the potential of plasmonic nanostructures for this purpose. I will also discuss specific cases in which the promoted reaction modifies the geometry of the nanostructure, analyzing the situation in which achiral particles can grow into chiral shapes through photocatalytic processes induced by circularly polarized light.

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