We present plasmonic enhancement of photocatalysis by depositing 5 nm Au nanoislands onto tungsten diselenide (WSe₂) monolayer films.¹ Under 532 nm wavelength illumination, the bare WSe₂ film produces a relatively small photocurrent (20 nA). With the addition of Au nanoparticles, we observe enhancements of up to 7X (0.14 μA) in the measured photocurrent. Despite these relatively small photocurrents, it is remarkable that adequate charge separating fields are generated over just 7.3 Å of material. Here, the improvement in the photocatalytic performance is caused by the local electric field enhancement produced in the monolayer WSe₂ monolayer by the plasmonic Au nanoislands, as verified by electromagnetic simulations using the finite different time domain (FDTD) method. The near-field optical enhancement increases the electron−hole pair generation rate at the surface of WSe₂, thus, increasing the amount of photogenerated charge contributing to photoelectrochemical reactions.

1. Chen, J., C.S. Bailey, Y. Hong, L. Wang, Z. Cai, L. Shen, B. Hou, Y. Wang, H. Shi, J. Sambur, W. Ren, E. Pop, and S.B. Cronin., Plasmon-Resonant Enhancement of Photocatalysis on Monolayer WSe₂. ACS Photonics, 6, 787 (2019).