Surface Plasmon Electrochemistry

TL;DR

This paper reviews the integration of surface plasmon polaritons with electrochemistry to develop multimodal biosensors, probe electrochemical processes, and enable plasmonic electrocatalysis, highlighting potential for advanced sensing and reaction control.

Contribution

It provides a tutorial overview and a literature review on combining surface plasmon polaritons with electrochemistry for biosensing and catalytic applications.

Findings

SPPs can enhance surface sensing capabilities.

Integration enables probing electrochemical activity with optical methods.

Potential for novel redox pathways via plasmonic electrocatalysis.

Abstract

Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are optical waves that propagate along a metal surface. They exhibit properties such as sub-wavelength localization and field enhancement which make them attractive for surface sensing, as commonly encountered in surface plasmon biosensors - the most widespread of all optical biosensors. Electrochemistry also occurs on metal surfaces, and electrochemical approaches are widely used to implement biosensors - electrochemical biosensors are the most prevalent biosensors in use. Given that metal surfaces are inherent to both techniques, it is natural to combine them into a single platform. The motivation may be (i) to realise a multimodal biosensor (electrochemical, optical), (ii) to use SPPs to probe electrochemical activity or the electrochemical double layer, thereby revealing additional or complementary information on the redox reactions occurring thereon, or (iii) to use SPPs to affect (pump) electrochemical reactions with non-equilibrium energetic (hot) electrons and holes created in working electrodes by SPP absorption, potentially leading to novel redox reaction pathways (plasmonic electrocatalysis). We introduce in a tutorial-like fashion basic concepts related to SPPs on planar structures and to electrochemistry, then we review non-exhaustively but representatively literature on the integration of these techniques.