Surface plasmon-driven photocatalysis in ambient, aqueous and high-vacuum monitored by SERS and TERS

•We reviewed plasmon-driven photocatalytic reactions in different environments.•Plasmon-driven photocatalytic reactions in ambient monitored by SERS and TERS.•Plasmon-driven photocatalytic reactions in aqueous monitored by SERS and TERS.•Plasmon-driven photocatalytic reactions in high-vacuum monitored by SERS and TERS.AbstractsThere has been an explosion of interests and activities on plasmon-driven catalytic reactions currently, which has been expanded photonic catalysis to plasmonic catalysis. Particularly, plasmonic catalysis, with activation energy provided by plasmon-induced hot electrons, can exhibit a giant catalytic action on the surface of silver or gold nanostructures, thus breaking the longstanding limitation of photonic catalysis that needs UV light generality. This new surface catalysis has been revealed in various chemical reactions by using surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) and tip-enhanced Raman scattering (TERS), which are the two representative techniques supporting the hot electrons (holes) generated from plasmon-decay on plamonic nanostructures’ surface. In this review, we fully explore the principle of plamonic catalysis, and especially review the advances of plasmon-driven surface catalytic reactions monitoring by SERS and TERS in atmosphere, aqueous and high-vacuum environments. These approaches significantly broaden the applications of plasmonic catalysis such as dissociation of hydrogen, water splitting and hydrocarbon conversion.