Light Harvesting in Magnetite-Coated Plasmonic Metal Nanospheres

GONZÁLEZ OCHEA, ROCÍO A.; ENCINA, EZEQUIEL R.

JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY C

AMER CHEMICAL SOC

Año: 2022 vol. 126 p. 885 - 885

1932-7447

he design of hybrid nanostructures composed of plasmonic metals and semiconductor oxides plays a major role in determining their efficiency for the conversion of solar energy. In this work, the light-harvesting properties of spherical core?shell hybrid nanostructures composed of a plasmonic metal core (Au, Ag, and Al) coated by a magnetite (Fe3O4) shell have been investigated through systematic discrete dipole approximation simulations. The diameter of the plasmonic core D was varied in the range of 5?90 nm, while the thickness of the Fe3O4 shell S was varied in the range of 2?40 nm. It was found that for a given set of D and S values, the absorbed photon flux within the Fe3O4 shell, ϕ, increases in the order Al, Au, and Ag. Furthermore, for a given size, which is D + 2S = constant, the largest ϕ value is approximately achieved when D/S = 3, 4, and 5 for Al, Au, and Ag as the core material, respectively. In addition, it was empirically found that ϕ correlates directly w