Tuning Plasmonic Metasurfaces via Phase Change Material Substrates for Modulating Reactivity in Light-Driven Reactions

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a phase change material-based plasmonic metasurface that dynamically modulates light-driven chemical reactivity by controlling electron populations, achieving a 2.4-fold change in reaction yield.

Contribution

It introduces a thermally tunable metasurface using Sb2S3 to actively control plasmonic resonance and reaction pathways in photocatalysis.

Findings

Reconfigurable platform modulates methylene blue degradation yield by a factor of 2.4.

Crystalline phase suppresses, amorphous phase enhances reaction yield.

Single metasurface architecture enables dynamic control under identical illumination.

Abstract

Phase change materials provide a powerful platform for dynamically modulating optical responses in nanophotonic systems. While plasmonic metasurfaces have been widely employed to enhance photocatalytic efficiency and promote particular light-driven reactions, active and dynamical control over reaction pathways within a single device remains challenging. Here, we report a phase-induced tunable metasurface that tailors photoexcited electron populations through mode hybridization, enabling selective control over the reactivity of light-driven chemical processes. By exploiting thermally induced refractive-index switching in a Sb2S3 cavity, the plasmonic resonance strength of Au nanodisks is actively tuned via cavity-plasmon hybridization. This reconfiguration modulates the product yield of methylene blue degradation by a factor of 2.4, suppressing to 0.45 in the crystalline phase and enhancing to 1.09 in the amorphous phase. Importantly, this reconfigurable platform enables dynamic control of the reaction yield using a single metasurface architecture under identical illumination conditions. Our approach establishes a dynamically programmable light-driven reaction platform capable of precisely manipulating reaction reactivity, offering new opportunities for selective photocatalysis in complex multibranch reaction systems.