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Updated: Jan 27, 2026

Evaluating Plasmonic Transport in Current-carrying Silver Nanowires
Published on: December 11, 2013
Oxygen defect-induced localized surface plasmon resonance at the WO3-x quantum dot/silver nanowire interface: SERS
1School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, People's Republic of China. yfgao@shu.edu.cn.
Abstract:
Oxygen defects play a crucial role in a variety of functional transition metal oxides, ranging from photocatalytic materials to photoelectric devices. Tungsten oxide (WO3-x) is a type of transition metal oxide that has rich substoichiometric compositions and possesses oxygen defects. These oxygen defects determine the photon-electron interactions in the WO3-x structures. Therein, WO3-x quantum dots (QDs) exhibit fast carrier-transport for photon-electron interactions due to their strong quantum-size effects. Here, we report the use of non-stoichiometric WO3-x QDs, as a model material, in combination with silver nanowires (Ag NWs) to study photon-electron interactions on the nanoscale. We demonstrate that the incident photon-to-electron conversion efficiency can be increased by 8.5% and that the dye photodegradation performance was improved by 40% in a WO2.72 QD@Ag NW (WO2.72 QDs supported on AgNWs) composite compared to those of individual WO2.72 QDs under simulated AM 1.5G light. Furthermore, the WO3-x QD@Ag NW composite exhibits both photocatalytic activity and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) features, and the WO3-x QDs can be switched between a "photocatalytic state" and a "SERS state" by changing the stoichiometric ratio. The synergistic effects are ascribed to the "plasmonic state" of WO2.72 QDs upon light irradiation. This work provides new insight into the design of highly efficient transition metal oxide/plasmonic metal nanocomposites for photoelectric devices.
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Dot Product
In engineering, the dot product of any two vectors is the product of the magnitudes of the vectors and the cosine of the angle between them. It is denoted by a dot symbol between the two vectors.
Consider a vehicle pulling an object along the ground using a rope. If the rope makes an angle with the horizontal axis, the work done can be calculated using the dot product of the force applied and the object's displacement.
The dot...

