Plasmon-assisted
reactions have different reaction mechanisms than
conventional chemical reactions occurring in solutions, and the hot
electrons produced by plasmon decay play an irreplaceable role in
plasmon-assisted coupling reactions. Here, we use p-mercaptobenzoic acid (pMBA) to illustrate this
point from different aspects. In a typical chemical reaction, a base
is added to deprotonate the carboxylic acid group in pMBA. In this system, however, there is no alkali or external charge
to remove the hydrogen, but it is obvious that this system is a dynamic
process. Here, although a Lewis base (Ag NPs) was used as the base,
the generated hot electrons were trapped by hydrogen ions in an acidic
environment, which reduced the efficiency of the ionization reaction.
We used SERS to study the ionization of pMBA and
to propose a method to regulate its ionization by adjusting its substituents.
Furthermore, in contrast to previous studies, the direction of electron
flow is clearly defined in this reaction system.