Time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy of hot carrier decay in gold plasmonic nanostructures

The project will involve the application of femtosecond time-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (TRPES) as a probe of plasmon-enhanced hot carrier generation and decay in plasmonic nanomaterials, both in ultrahigh vacuum (surfaces) and in aqueous solution. These hot carriers undergo energy loss, which can be via energy transfer to adjacent molecules or materials.
The TRPES spectroscopy measurements will involve the use of femtosecond lasers, an ultrahigh vacuum surface science apparatus with a hemispherical electron energy analyser and a liquid-microjet apparatus with a magnetic-bottle time-of-flight electron analyser. A number of different plasmonic architectures will be considered, including colloidal nanoparticles and metamaterials based on arrays of electro- chemically grown gold nanorods, and characterised using optical extinction spectroscopy coupled with numerical modelling of electromagnetic field simulations. Nanomaterials will be fabricated with properties tuned to explore the dependence of photoelectron emission on resonant excitation of surface plasmons, and on nanostructure geometry.