Recent advances in research on plasmonic enhancement of photocatalysis
The purpose of the present work is to review the results of the research on the plasmonic enhancement of photocatalytic activity of composite nanostructures consisting of metal and oxide semiconductor nanoparticles (NPs). Besides the separation of electrons and holes photoexcited in an oxide semiconductor resulting in the reduction of their recombination rate, the plasmon resonance in metal NPs deposited on or embedded into the oxide semiconductor significantly enhances the photon absorption by the nanocomposite compared with that by the single oxide semiconductor, i.e. the plasmonic enhancement. The main content of this review is a presentation of the study of various nanocomposite photocatalysts with enhanced activities due to the plasmonic enhancement effect, i.e. the plasmonic photocatalysts. Results of the study of many two-component nanocomposite plasmonic photocatalysts are presented. The simplest one consists of Au NPs or Ag NPs embedded into TiO2. The other ones ...