TY - JOUR A1 - Sarhan, Radwan Mohamed A1 - Koopman, Wouter-Willem Adriaan A1 - Schuetz, Roman A1 - Schmid, Thomas A1 - Liebig, Ferenc A1 - Koetz, Joachim A1 - Bargheer, Matias T1 - The importance of plasmonic heating for the plasmondriven photodimerization of 4-nitrothiophenol JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Metal nanoparticles form potent nanoreactors, driven by the optical generation of energetic electrons and nanoscale heat. The relative influence of these two factors on nanoscale chemistry is strongly debated. This article discusses the temperature dependence of the dimerization of 4-nitrothiophenol (4-NTP) into 4,4′-dimercaptoazobenzene (DMAB) adsorbed on gold nanoflowers by Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS). Raman thermometry shows a significant optical heating of the particles. The ratio of the Stokes and the anti-Stokes Raman signal moreover demonstrates that the molecular temperature during the reaction rises beyond the average crystal lattice temperature of the plasmonic particles. The product bands have an even higher temperature than reactant bands, which suggests that the reaction proceeds preferentially at thermal hot spots. In addition, kinetic measurements of the reaction during external heating of the reaction environment yield a considerable rise of the reaction rate with temperature. Despite this significant heating effects, a comparison of SERS spectra recorded after heating the sample by an external heater to spectra recorded after prolonged illumination shows that the reaction is strictly photo-driven. While in both cases the temperature increase is comparable, the dimerization occurs only in the presence of light. Intensity dependent measurements at fixed temperatures confirm this finding. KW - enhanced raman-scattering KW - charge-transfer KW - metal KW - nanoparticles KW - catalysis KW - AU KW - 4-nitrobenzenethiol KW - aminothiophenol KW - photocatalysis KW - wavelength Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-38627-2 SN - 2045-2322 VL - 9 PB - Macmillan Publishers Limited CY - London ER -