Characterization and Properties of Plasmonic-Catalytic Nanostructures from the Atomic Scale to the Reactor Scale

This chapter introduces a variety of techniques that have been used to characterize plasmonic photocatalytic nanostructures. It describes the most pertinent analytical chemistry techniques utilized to study ensemble chemical reactivity by the plasmonic photocatalysis community to date and their basic operations. Electron energy loss spectroscopy is a complimentary technique to energy dispersive spectroscopy, which can be used not only for compositional analysis but has also recently been developed for understanding the nanoscale optical properties of plasmonic photocatalysts. Within the field of optics, it is usually sufficient to utilize scanning electron microscopy (SEM) for such correlated optical property studies. SEM uses a lower accelerating voltage (typically 0.5 kV -30 kV) relative to transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and images nanostructures via electron scattering. Furthermore, TEM imaging can resolve atomic scale details of the catalysts, allowing correlation between optical properties and atomic structure, not only nanostructure.