Efficient Hot Electron Extraction in Ag-Cu/TiO2 for High Performance Lateral Photovoltaic Effect

Plasmon-enhanced lateral photovoltaic effect (LPE) in metal-semiconductor Schottky junctions has been proposed as a fascinating alternative for position sensitive detectors (PSDs). The efficiency of plasmon-induced hot electron injection into semiconductors which affects by nanoparticle composition is an important parameter for surface plasmon based LPE. In this letter, we modified the d-band density of states (DOS) of Cu nanoparticles (NPs) by depositing Ag-Cu composite nanoparticles to improve the hot electron injection efficiency, and observed an enhanced LPE in TiO
₂
/Ag-Cu NPs/Si structure. It exhibits better lateral photovoltage sensitivity than samples with Cu NPs and Ag NPs in the visible region, especially under 445 nm laser irradiation. These findings offer an effective avenue for facilitating the photoelectric conversion in LPE, while opening the door to the possibilities in high sensitivity LPE-based optoelectronic device applications.