Regensburg 2025 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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O: Fachverband Oberflächenphysik
O 96: Plasmonics and Nanooptics: Light-Matter Interaction, Spectroscopy II
O 96.6: Vortrag
Freitag, 21. März 2025, 11:45–12:00, H4
Tracking Non-Equilibrium Electron Distributions to Propel Chemical Dynamics at Surfaces — •Henry T. Snowden1, Reinhard J. Maurer1, Markus Uehlein2, and Baerbel Rethfeld2 — 1University of Warwick, Coventry, UK — 2RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany
A mechanistic understanding of ultrafast light-matter interactions with surfaces and nanoparticles is invaluable for the study of ultrafast dynamics at surfaces. Immediately after a laser pulse, non-equilibrium electrons are generated in metals which rapidly relax to a thermal distribution that follows the two-temperature model. Here, we study the longevity of electronic non-equilibrium which depends on the electronic structure and other materials properties. We simulate the temporal evolution of non-equilibrium electron distributions with the Athermal Electron Model (AthEM), which explicitly considers electronic nonequilibrium, a laser term and electron scattering in the relaxation time approximation. Equipped with this approach, we investigate how athermal electron-hole pair distributions differ in various materials configurations such as intermetallic interphases, and nanoparticles. We will use this information to discuss the requirements to create long-lived non-equilibrium distributions from which high-energy charge carriers can be harvested.
Keywords: Light-Matter Interactions; Surface Chemistry; Non-equilibrium dynamics