Plasmonic Nanocavities Enable Self-Induced Electrostatic Catalysis

The potential of strong light-matter interactions remains to be further explored within a chemical context. Towards this end we here study the electromagnetic interaction between molecules and plasmonic nanocavities. By means of electronic structure calculations, we show that self-induced catalysis emerges without any external driving due to the interaction of the molecular permanent and fluctuating dipole moments with the plasmonic cavity modes. We also exploit this scheme to modify the transition temperature T_1/2 of spin-crossover complexes as an example of how one can ultimately control materials response through strong light-matter interactions.