Instantaneous generation of charge-separated state on TiO₂ surface sensitized with plasmonic nanoparticles

Photoexcitation of the plasmon band in metallic nanoparticles adsorbed on a TiO2 surface initiates many important photovoltaic and photocatalytic processes. The traditional view on the photoinduced charge separation involves excitation of a surface plasmon, its subsequent dephasing into electron-hole pairs, followed by electron transfer (ET) from the metal nanoparticle into TiO2. We use nonadiabatic molecular dynamics combined with time-domain density functional theory to demonstrate that an electron appears inside TiO2 immediately upon photoexcitation with a high probability (~50%), bypassing the intermediate step of electron-hole thermalization inside the nanoparticle. By providing a detailed, atomistic description of the charge separation, energy relaxation, and electron-hole recombination processes, the simulation rationalizes why the experimentally observed ultrafast photoinduced ET in an Au-TiO2 system is possible in spite of the fast energy relaxation. The simulation shows that the photogenerated plasmon is highly delocalized onto TiO2, and thus, it is shared by the electron donor and acceptor materials. In the 50% of the cases remaining after the instantaneous photogeneration of the charge-separated state, the electron injects into TiO2 on a sub-100 fs time scale by the nonadiabatic mechanism due to high density of acceptor states. The electron-phonon relaxation parallels the injection and is slower, resulting in a transient heating of the TiO2 surface by 40 K. Driven by entropy, the electron moves further into TiO2 bulk. If the electron remains trapped at the TiO2 surface, it recombines with the hole on a picosecond time scale. The obtained ET and recombination times are in excellent agreement with the experiment. The delocalized plasmon state observed in our study establishes a novel concept for plasmonic photosensitization of wide band gap semiconductors, leading to efficient conversion of photons to charge carriers and to hybrid materials with a wide variety of applications in photocatalysis and photovoltaics.