Plasmonic Silver Nanoparticles Facilitate Electron Emission from Diamond upon Sun-Like Excitation

The development of a stable, non-toxic material that emits electrons following absorption of visible light may have a major impact on the solar photocatalysis of difficult reactions such as CO₂ and N₂ reduction, as well as for targeted chemical transformations in general. Diamond is a good candidate, however it is a wide bandgap material requiring deep UV photons ($$ <227 nm) to promote electrons from the valence band into the conduction band. Embedding silver nanoparticles under the diamond surface allows the photoconductivity of the diamond in the spectral region of the surface plasmon resonance to be increased, while also leading to an enhancement of visible light photoemission. Considering the low intensity of the light sources used in this work and the spectral properties of the enhanced photoconductivity and photoemission a mechanism based on plasmonically enhanced photoconductivity which in turn allows surface states emptied by photoemission to be recharged thus leading to enhanced photoemission in the visible range is proposed.