Theory of plasmon enhanced interfacial electron transfer

A particular attempt to improve the efficiency of a dye sensitized solar cell is it's decoration with metal nano-particles (MNP). The MNP-plasmon induced enhancement of the local field enlarges the photoexcitation of the dyes and a subsequent improvement of the charge separation efficiency may result. In a recent work (2014 J. Phys. Chem. C 118 2812) we presented a theory of plasmon enhanced interfacial electron transfer for perylene attached to a TiO2 surface and placed in the proximity of a spherical MNP. These earlier studies are generalized here to the coupling of to up to four MNPs and to the use of somewhat altered molecular parameters. If the MNPs are placed close to each other strong hybridization of plasmon excitations appears and a broad resonance to which molecular excitations are coupled is formed. To investigate this situation the whole charge injection dynamics is described in the framework of the density matrix theory. The approach accounts for optical excitation of the dye coupled to the MNPs and considers subsequent electron injection into the rutile TiO2-cluster. Using a tight-binding model for the TiO2-system with about 105 atoms the electron motion in the cluster is described. We again consider short optical excitation which causes an intermediate steady state with a time-independent overall probability to have the electron injected into the cluster. This probability is used to introduce an enhancement factor which rates the influence of the MNP. Values larger than 500 are obtained.