Structure-Property-Performance Relationships of Cuprous Oxide Nanostructures for Dielectric Mie Resonance-Enhanced Photocatalysis

Nanostructured metal oxides, such as Cu2O, CeO2, alpha-Fe2O3, and TiO2, can efficiently mediate photocatalysis for solar-to-chemical energy conversion and pollution remediation. In this contribution, we report a novel approach, dielectric Mie resonance-enhanced photocatalysis, to enhance the catalytic activity of metal oxide photocatalysts. Specifically, we demonstrate that Cu2O nanostructures exhibiting dielectric Mie resonances can exhibit up to an order of magnitude higher photocatalytic rate as compared with Cu2O nanostructures not exhibiting dielectric Mie resonances. Our finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation and experimental results predict a volcano-type relationship between the photocatalytic rate and the size of Cu2O nanospheres and nanocubes. Using transient absorption measurements, we reveal that a coherent electronic process associated with dielectric Mie resonance-mediated charge carrier generation is dominant in Cu2O nanostructures that exhibit higher photocatalytic rates. Although we experimentally demonstrate dielectric Mie resonance-enhanced photocatalysis with only Cu2O nanoparticles here, based on our FDTD simulations, we anticipate the same can be achieved with other metal oxide photocatalysts, including CeO2, alpha-Fe2O3, and TiO2.