On the pathway of photoexcited electrons: probing photon-to-electron and photon-to-phonon conversions in silicon by ATR-IR.

Photoexcitation and charge carrier thermalization inside semiconductor photocatalysts are two important steps in solar fuel production. Here, photoexcitation and charge carrier thermalization in a silicon wafer are for the first time probed by a novel, yet simple and user-friendly Attenuated Total Reflectance Infrared spectroscopy (ATR-IR) system.