Composite Ferroelectric and Plasmonic Particles for Hot Charge Separation and Photocatalytic Hydrogen Gas Production

Plasmonic nanoparticles are excellent light absorbers for harvesting solar energy, resulting in hot electrons that can be utilized in photocatalytic hydrogen production. However, the hot electrons generated in a localized surface plasmon resonance process have a very short lifetime and are challenging to use efficiently. Herein, using near IR light irradiation, we show that by combining gold nanorods (AuNRs) with ferroelectric PbTiO3 particles that possess a large remanent electric dipole moment, hot charges generated on plasmonic particles can be injected into ferroelectric materials and drive the photocatalysis reaction. Compared to metallic Pt-end-capped AuNRs, the efficiency of using hot electrons for photocatalytic reactions is enhanced for the composite catalyst, which improves the light-to-chemical energy conversion efficiencies by about 1 order of magnitude for the same amount of plasmonic particles being used.