Hot-Electron-Mediated Photochemical Reactions: Principles, Recent Advances, and Challenges

Hot electron chemistry has drawn tremendous attention from applications related to materials, energy, sensing, and catalysis. The plasmon-induced generation of hot electrons and their transfer behavior are very important for understanding plasmonic-enhanced applications and for achieving practically useful efficiency. From a plasmonic perspective, well-designed plasmonic structures that can manipulate surface plasmons are able to enhance the efficiencies of hot electron-based processes. This progress report summarizes the recent experimental and theoretical advances on the hot electron effect, emphasizing the crucial role of surface plasmons that are highly designable by using metal nanostructures. In particular, recent breakthroughs in the emerging fields of heterogeneous catalysis based on the hot electron effect are highlighted. Important design principles, mechanisms, and concepts, as well as challenges and perspectives, are illustrated and discussed.