Forcing reactions with plasmons
Traditional catalysts can lack both efficiency and selectivity. Tim Wogan explains how plasmons offer the potential to do chemistry with a lighter touch
As the need to wean society off fossil fuels grows ever more intense, the impetus to use renewable sunlight to power the chemical industry grows ever stronger. The electromagnetic waves in sunlight can be many thousands of times the size of an atom, however, which makes coupling sunlight directly into atomic systems inefficient. But plasmonics may offer an elegant solution. Localised surface plasmon resonances, or plasmons for short, are quantised oscillations of a metal nanostructure’s free electron density. Incoming electromagnetic radiation can excite them through the so-called plasmonic interaction.