Figure 6.

A perspective on the various charge-separation pathways in noble metal–semiconductor systems. (a) The conventional plasmonic hot electron transfer (PHET) mechanism where a plasmon (blue ellipsoidal cloud) in the noble metal dephases into a hot electron-hole pair via Landau damping, following which, the hot electron is injected into the conduction band (CB) of the semiconductor. The electron-hole pairs generated in such a manner display a broad distribution of energies. (b) The IFCT mechanism where an electron in the noble metal is directly excited into the CB of the semiconductor, and its plasmonic counterpart in (c) PICTT where the plasmon dephases with the direct creation of an electron in the CB of the semiconductor and a hole in the metal. VB indicates the semiconductor valence band, while hν is the energy of the incident photon. Reprinted with permission from Ref [134] Copyright The American Association for the Advancement of Science (2015).