A research team led by Professors Liu Jia and Zhang Jiatao at Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) has made significant progress in the development of plasmonic photothermal conversion materials and their catalytic applications. Their findings have recently been published in the prestigious journal Advanced Materials under the title Cu2FeS2: Discovery of an Exceptional Thermoplasmonic Semiconductor via Arrested Cation Exchange.

This research introduces a novel material system for non-precious metal plasmonic semiconductors, offering broad application prospects in fields reliant on photothermal conversion processes.

Ideal plasmonic photothermal conversion materials need to exhibit both efficient light absorption and photothermal conversion capabilities. While materials like Au, Cu2-xS, TiN and MXenes have garnered attention, the field continues to seek new materials that offer better efficiency and cost advantages. The BIT team employed a chemical thermodynamics-driven cation exchange nonequilibrium synthesis to create Cu2FeS2, a theoretically predicted material that does not naturally occur and had never been experimentally synthesized before.

Cu2FeS2 demonstrates exceptional localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) light absorption across the 300-1,500 nm range, with a molar extinction coefficient exceeding 10^7 M−1 cm−1, surpassing halide perovskite materials. It also shows a high photothermal conversion efficiency (PCE) of 68 percent to 90 percent across the visible to near-infrared spectrum, outperforming current mainstream materials like Au nanoparticles and Ti3C2-based MXenes.

Beyond its potential in photothermal catalysis, this new material holds promise for applications in photothermal biotherapy, solar seawater desalination, solar energy-harvesting nanofluids, thermoplasmonic micro-nano fabrication and laser printing, photothermal swimming nanomotors, photothermal nanoactuators, and photothermal nanorobots, among other fields centered on photothermal conversion principles.

Paper details: Yuemei Li, Hongfei Gu, Zexuan Lu, Haoqing Zhang, Mengyao Su, Xiuming Zhang, Jia Liu*, Wenxiong Shi*, Jiatao Zhang*, Cu2FeS2: Discovery of an Exceptional Thermoplasmonic Semiconductor via Arrested Cation Exchange. Adv. Mater. 2026, e22120.