Enabling sustainable chemical manufacturing with plasmon catalysis, optimized from the atomic to the reactor scale

Chemical manufacturing plays a vital role in industries such as construction, plastics, pharmaceuticals, food production, and fertilizers, but it is also one of the most energy-intensive processes. Optical excitation of plasmons offers a promising pathway toward more sustainable chemical synthesis. Plasmons generate nanoscale regions with intense electromagnetic fields that can alter electronic and molecular energy levels, facilitate access to excited-state dynamics, and enable reaction pathways that are unattainable under standard conditions. Moreover, plasmons can be efficiently activated using sunlight or solar-powered LEDs, paving the way for greener chemical transformations.



Here, we advance plasmon photocatalysis research across scales, from the atomic level to the reactor level. We begin by detailing progress in in-situ atomic-scale catalyst characterization using environmental optically-coupled transmission electron microscopy. By introducing both light and reactive gases into the electron microscope column, we can observe chemical transformations under varying illumination, gaseous environments, and controlled temperatures. This approach enables the correlation of three-dimensional atomic-scale catalyst structures with their photochemical reactivity. Next, we demonstrate how these atomic-scale insights drive optimized performance at the reactor scale. We explore reactions such as acetylene hydrogenation with Ag-Pd catalysts and nitrogen fixation with Au-Ru catalysts, where Au/Ag serves as a highly efficient plasmonic light absorber and Pd/Ru acts as the catalytic component. Our findings reveal that plasmons influence the rates of distinct reaction steps in different ways and that reaction nucleation occurs at electromagnetic hotspots—even when these hotspots are not the preferred nucleation sites. Additionally, plasmons unlock new reaction pathways not observed in the absence of illumination, enabling highly efficient and selective catalysis through precise tuning of bimetallic catalyst compositions. Collectively, we use these phenomena to demonstrate sustainable ammonia synthesis, achieving room-temperature, light-driven nitrogen hydrogenation by leveraging plasmon-mediated hot electrons to overcome the energy barrier of N₂ dissociation. This process offers a transformative alternative to the Haber-Bosch method, mimicking the efficiency of natural nitrogenase enzymes under mild conditions. Our results provide a roadmap for how atomically-architected photocatalysts can precisely control molecular interactions for high-efficiency and product-selective chemistry.