Hot carrier dynamics in LSPR tuneable plasmonic TiN at the interface of p and n type semiconductors

The field of plasmonics has grown tremendously in the last decade and with the progress of this field, new materials with some exceptional plasmonic properties need to be found out to replace conventional plasmonic materials such as Au and Ag. In this work, we have successfully synthesized a very promising alternative plasmonic material, Titanium Nitride (TiN) by magnetron sputtering, with the tuning of LSPR from visible to NIR region. Stoichiometry as well as the morphology & distribution of the synthesized nanoparticles are found to be the major factors behind this tuning. To understand the hot carrier dynamics of TiN plasmon at the interface of both the p-type as well as n-type semiconducting medium, two different devices are fabricated with the synthesized TiN samples. We have shown that both the hot holes and hot electrons can be useful for photocurrent generation if the TiN fermi level gets the favorable energy band alignment with the associated semiconductor. The photo-electrical characterization of the devices is carried out and the charge transport mechanism is thoroughly studied.