Surface Plasmon Electrochemistry: Tutorial and Review

Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) are optical surface waves propagating along a metal surface. They exhibit attributes such as field enhancement and sub-wavelength localization, which make them attractive for sensing, they heavily exploited in biosensors. Electrochemistry also occurs on surfaces, electrochemical techniques commonly applied As surfaces integral both, it is natural to combine these into single platform. Motivations include: (i) realising multimodal biosensor (electrochemical optical), (ii) using SPPs probe the double layer or activity, thus revealing complementary information redox reactions, (iii) pump reactions by creating non-equilibrium energetic electrons holes working electrode through absorption of thereon. The latter interest may yield novel reaction pathways (i.e., plasmonic electrocatalysis).