Abstract
Studies on hot carrier science and technology associated with various types of nanostructures are dominating today’s nanotechnology research. Here we report a novel synthesis of polyaniline-gold (PAni-Au) nanocomposite thin films with gold nanostructures (AuNs) of desired shape and size uniformly incorporated in the polymer matrix. According to shape as well as size variation of AuNs, two tunable plasmonic UV-Visible absorption bands are observed in each of the nanocomposites. Plasmonic devices are fabricated using PAni-Au nanocomposite having different UV-Visible plasmon absorption bands. However, all the devices show strong photoelectrical responses in the blue region (400–500 nm) of the visible spectrum. The d-band to sp-band (d-sp) transition of electrons in AuNs produces hot holes that are the only carriers in the material responsible for photocurrent generation in the device. This work provides an experimental evidence of novel plasmonic hot hole generation process that was still a prediction.
Highlights
The excellent light-trapping and local electromagnetic-field-enhancing properties of surface plasmons invite increasing research in the field of plasmonics thereby opening a wide range of applications in cancer therapy, photovoltaic devices, catalytic activity etc[1,2,3]
Reports are available on hot carrier generation due to the decay of localized surface plasmon in plasmonic nanostructures in n-type semiconductors, which mainly works on the principle of hot electron generation due to the decay of surface plasmon in the metal-dielectric interfaces[3,4,5]
As per our literature survey no experimental evidence is available on any photovoltaic device that works on the principle of plasmonic hot hole generation process
Summary
The excellent light-trapping and local electromagnetic-field-enhancing properties of surface plasmons invite increasing research in the field of plasmonics thereby opening a wide range of applications in cancer therapy, photovoltaic devices, catalytic activity etc[1,2,3]. As per our literature survey no experimental evidence is available on any photovoltaic device that works on the principle of plasmonic hot hole generation process. We report the plasmonic hot hole generation due to the d-sp transition of AuNs in a PAni-Au nanocomposite based device configuration.
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