Publication date: 22nd July 2026
Plasmonic nanostructures provide a powerful route to harvest visible light and generate highly non-equilibrium charge carriers with energies that can exceed those accessible through conventional semiconductor excitation. Their practical use, however, is limited by ultrafast carrier thermalization and competing trapping and recombination pathways. Using energy-resolved time-resolved two-photon photoemission spectroscopy, we investigate how metal/semiconductor interfaces can redirect these nonequilibrium carriers on the femtosecond timescale.
In Au nanoparticle/GaN heterostructures, localized surface plasmon excitation generates a nonthermal carrier distribution in Au and enables direct electron injection into the GaN conduction band within <40 fs, before substantial electron–electron thermalization. Complementary measurements reveal similarly ultrafast plasmon-induced hole transfer, showing that both electron and hole extraction can occur during the initial nonequilibrium response [1,2].
In Pt/GaN, Pt suppresses defect-mediated trapping and introduces an approximately energy-independent electron-transfer pathway within ~50 fs, while photoinduced band flattening promotes transport of carriers from the bulk toward the surface [3]. Finally, Au/TiO₂/Au plasmonic nanocavities exploit strong optical-field confinement to drive sub-40 fs nonthermal electron injection, effectively shifting interfacial transfer from a thermally limited toward a field-driven regime and enhancing water-oxidation performance [4].
Together, these studies demonstrate that controlling plasmonic excitation, interfacial electronic structure, and nanoscale field confinement can preserve carrier excess energy, suppress loss pathways, and improve charge utilization in photocatalytic systems.
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