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Extraordinary sublinear hot electron current in plasmonic Au/polycrystalline TiO2 heterostructure

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Abstract

Single- and poly-crystalline semiconductors have quite different photonic and electrical properties. Benefiting from the much lower fabrication cost, poly-crystalline semiconductors attract considerable attention in large-scale applications. However, the effect of polycrystal on plasmonic metal/semiconductor heterostructure has long been ignored. Here, we fabricate Au-antennas/single-crystalline-TiO2 (Au/s-TiO2) and Au-antennas/polycrystalline TiO2 (Au/p-TiO2) samples, and compare the hot electron behaviors in them. An extraordinary sublinear photocurrent with light intensity for the Au/p-TiO2 is observed. Due to the abundant grain boundary of p-TiO2, the hot electron current changes from Schottky-barrier-limited to bulk-limited transport. Moreover, there is a larger Schottky barrier at Au and p-TiO2 interface than that on Au and s-TiO2 interface. This makes the hot carriers recombine mainly in the Au particles of Au/p-TiO2 when a negative bias is applied. These results are highly helpful to improve the performance of plasmonic metal/semiconductor heterostructure for large-scale applications, such as photocatalyst and photovoltaic cell, and are also beneficial for the design of plasmonic devices with special properties.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (12204085, 12074054, 12274054) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (DUT21LK06).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Materials Modification By Laser, Electron, and Ion Beams (Ministry of Education), School of Physics, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, People’s Republic of China

    Zhiguang Sun & Yurui Fang

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  1. Zhiguang Sun
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  2. Yurui Fang
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and data analysis. Material preparation and data collection were performed by YF. The first draft of the manuscript was written by ZS and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yurui Fang.

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Sun, Z., Fang, Y. Extraordinary sublinear hot electron current in plasmonic Au/polycrystalline TiO2 heterostructure. Appl. Phys. A 129, 578 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-023-06861-1

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