Solar

Allows standard PV panels to be installed on large bodies of water such as drinking water reservoirs, quarry lakes, irrigation canals or remediation and tailing ponds.

Heraeus provides advanced products and excellent services for crystalline, thin film and 3rd generation Photovoltaic technologies.

Strong coupling between plasmons and optical modes, such as waveguide or resonator modes, gives rise to a splitting in the plasmon absorption band. As a result, two new hybrid modes are formed that exhibit near-field enhancement effects. These hybrid modes have been exploited to improve light absorption in a number of systems. Here we show that this modal strong coupling between a Fabry–Pérot nanocavity mode and a localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) facilitates water splitting reactions. We use a gold nanoparticle (Au-NP)/TiO2/Au-film structure as a photoanode. This structure exhibits modal strong coupling between the Fabry–Pérot nanocavity modes of the TiO2 thin film/Au film and LSPR of the Au NPs. Electronic excitation of the Au NPs is promoted by the optical hybrid modes across a broad range of wavelengths, followed by a hot electron transfer to TiO2. A key feature of our structure is that the Au NPs are partially inlaid in the TiO2 layer, which results in an enhancement of the coupling strength and water-oxidation efficiency. We observe an 11-fold increase in the incident photon-to-current con-version efficiency with respect to a photoanode structure with no Au film. Also, the internal quantum efficiency is enhanced 1.5 times under a strong coupling over that under uncoupled conditions.