The efficiency of generation of energetic plasmonic carriers in metal nanostructures strongly depends on the optical design and material composition. This study demonstrates the ability to generate large numbers of hot plasmonic carriers in specially-designed hybrid nanostructures [1,2]. The hot-electron generation becomes especially efficient in plasmonic nanostructures with electromagnetic hot spots [1]. The energy distribution of optically-excited plasmonic carriers is very different in metal nanocrystals with large and small sizes [2]. For metal nanocrystals with smaller sizes (less than 10nm) or in nanostructures with hot spots, the excited state gets a large number of carriers with high energies. Nanostructures with a strong plasmonic enhancement generate unusually large numbers of energetic electrons, which can be observed using ultra-fast spectroscopy, photo-currents and photo-chemistry [1,3,4]. Along with the hot-electron generation, which is a quantum effect, the electromagnetic radiation typically causes efficient heating in metal nanostructures, which may also be concentrated in thermal hot spots [5]. The results obtained in this study can be used to design plasmonic hot-electron nanodevices for photo-catalysis, photo-detectors and solar-energy applications. [1] H. Harutyunyan, A. B. F. Martinson, D. Rosenmann, L.K. Khorashad, L.V. Besteiro, A.O.Govorov, and G.P. Wiederrecht, Nature Nanotechnology 10, 770–774 (2015). [2] A.O. Govorov, H. Zhang, V. Demir, and Y. K. Gun’ko, NanoToday 9, 85 (2014). [3] ] W. Li, Z. J. Coppens, L. Vázquez, W. Wang, A. O. Govorov, and J. Valentine, Nature Communications 6, 8379 (2015). [4] L. Weng, H. Zhang, A. O. Govorov, and M. Ouyang, Nature Communications 5, 4792 (2014). [5] A. Govorov and H.H. Richardson, NanoToday 2, 20 (2007).