Smart Design of Noble Metal–Copper Chalcogenide Dual Plasmonic Heteronanoarchitectures for Emerging Applications: Progress and Prospects

Abstract

Dual plasmonic metal–semiconductor heteronanostructures have been actively investigated due to their outstanding functional characteristics arising from the merging of two materials. In this review, the synthetic approaches, various designs, enhanced properties, and prospective applications of noble metal–nonstoichiometric copper chalcogenide nanosystems are summarized. The tunable size, shape, structure type (solid or hollow), composition, and doping level of the constituents produce several configurations of heteronanocomposites reported here. The colloidal synthetic approaches for the fabrication of dual plasmonic nanomaterials with controllable plasmonic properties are presented as well. The unique features of dual plasmonic nanostructures show synergistic and plasmon resonance coupling effects and enhanced light–matter interactions, which cannot be simply assigned to the mixture of pristine materials. Dual plasmonic hybrid nanosystems are promising candidates for enhanced photocatalysis, photothermal cancer therapy, improved sensing, photovoltaic devices, and upconversion luminescence. In conclusion, a brief outlook of the identified challenges in the area of dual plasmonic noble metal–vacancy-doped copper chalcogenide nanomaterials to be addressed in the nearest future is provided.