Evidence of Plasmonic Coupling in Gallium Nanoparticles/Graphene/SiC

Graphene is emerging as a promising material for plasmonics applications due to its strong light–matter interactions, most of which are theoretically predicted but not yet experimentally realized. Therefore, the integration of plasmonic nanoparticles to create metal nanoparticle/graphene composites enables numerous phenomena important for a range of applications from photonics to catalysis. For these applications it is important to articulate the coupling of photon‐based excitations such as the interaction between plasmons in each of the material components, as well as their charge‐based interactions dependent upon the energy alignment at the metal/graphene interface. These coupled phenomena underpin an active application area in graphene‐based composites due to nanoparticle‐dependent surface‐enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) of graphene phonon modes. This study reveals the coupling of a graphene/SiC support with Ga‐nanoparticle‐localized surface plasmon resonance, which is of particular interest due to its ability to be tuned across the UV into the near‐IR region. This work is the first demonstration of the evolving plasmon resonance on graphene during the synthesis of surface‐supported metal nanoparticles, thus providing evidence for the theoretically predicted screening revealed by a damped resonance with little energy shift. Therefore, the role of the graphene/substrate heterojunction in tailoring the plasmon resonance for nanoplasmonic applications is shown. Additionally, the coupled phenomena between the graphene–Ga plasmon properties, charge transfer, and SERS of graphene vibrational modes are explored. Ga nanoparticles are coupled to graphene/SiC creating a plasmonic system in which charge flows from SiC to graphene to Ga nanoparticles. The enhancement of graphene modes by coupling to Ga plasmon resonance makes the Ga/graphene/SiC suitable for UV surface‐enhanced Raman scattering.