Numerical investigation of surface plasmon resonance effects on photocatalytic activities using silver nanobeads photodeposited onto a titanium dioxide layer

We numerically investigated the surface plasmon resonance effects on photocatalytic activities using silver nanobeads photodeposited onto a titanium dioxide (TiO2) layer by three-dimensional finite element method. Results show that the proposed case C structure exhibits significantly high photocatalytic activity in a wide range of incident angle of light and broad wavelength range in near-UV, visible and near-infrared. The enhanced electric field region, intensity and peak resonance wavelength could be increased by enhancing the inner medium dielectric constant (ε) in silver nanobeads with ε in the range 1.7689–11.56 and the incident angle of light θ in the range 30°–75°.