Identification of surface oxygen vacancy-related phonon-plasmon coupling in TiO₂ single crystal

Oxygen vacancies (OVs) play a critical role in the physical properties and applications of titanium dioxide nanostructures, which are widely used in electrochemistry and photo catalysis nowadays. In this work, OVs were artificially introduced in the surface of a pure TiO₂ single crystal by pulsed laser irradiation. Raman spectra showed that the intensity of E_g mode was enhanced. Theoretical calculations disclose that this was caused by the strong coupling effect between the phonon vibration and plasmon induced by the OVs-related surface deformation, and good agreement was achieved between the experiments and theory.