Plasmon-driven catalytic reactions in optoplasmonic sandwich hybrid structure

As an interesting phenomenon in the field of surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), the plasmon-driven catalytic reaction (PDSC) induced by plasmonic hot electrons has great value in the research of novel properties of surface plasmons and accuracy of SERS applications. In this work, an optoplasmonic sandwich hybrid structure is proposed for studying PDSC of p-aminothiophenol (PATP) molecules, which is composed of Au film, metal organic frameworks (MOFs) nanoparticles, zeolithic imidazolate (ZIF-8), and single S i O ₂ microsphere (Au f i l m@M O F s@S i O ₂). In order to analyze the novel, to the best of our knowledge, phenomenon of the PDSC in this micro-nano structure, the hot electron generation in the MOF without the plasmonic core is carried out by combining the plasmonic enhancement of gold film with the light concentration of microspheres. Experimental data show that the PDSC reactions is dependent on the size of the MOFs nanoparticle and the size of the S i O ₂ microsphere, which is confirmed by the electromagnetic field simulation of the finite-difference time-domain method (FDTD). Our work not only strengthens the understanding of surface plasmon in optoplasmonic hybrid structures but also has broad application prospects in the SERS and plasmon-driven catalytic fields.