Sensing Interfacial Non-Faradaic and Faradaic Processes via Plasmonic-Enhanced Metallic Luminescence in Nano-Optoelectrodes

Metallic nanostructures supporting surface plasmon modes can concentrate optical fields, and enhance luminescence processes from the metal surface at plasmonic hotspots. Such nanoplasmonic metal luminescence contributes to the spectral background in surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) measurements and is helpful in bioimaging, nano-thermometry, and chemical reaction monitoring applications. Despite increasing interest in nanoplasmonic metal luminescence, little attention has been paid to investigating its dependence on voltage modulation. Also, the hyphenated electrochemical surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (EC-SERS) technique typically ignores voltage-dependent spectral background information associated with nanoplasmonic metal luminescence due to limited mechanistic understanding and poor measurement reproducibility. In this thesis, we combine the experimental observations and theoretical study on dynamic Faradaic & non-Faradaic modulated nanoplasmonic metallic luminescence and molecular vibrational Raman from hotspots at the electrode-electrolyte interfaces using multiple novel nano-optoelectrodes. Our work represents a critical step toward the general application of nanoplasmonic metal luminescence signals in optical voltage biosensing, hybrid optical-electrical signal transduction, and interfacial electrochemical monitoring.