抄録
Photo-excitation of hot carriers in metallic nanostructures have been applied to various photoelectric
conversions to harvest low-energy photons. The relaxed hot carriers become heat where the heated areas
are limited to the surrounding of the metallic nanostructures, leading to indirect local heating. In contrast
to the research on photoelectric and photothermal conversions using metals, our recent works have
shown that transition metal nitrides and transition meal carbides can be alternative to metals. These
materials are cost-effective and out-perform gold that has been used in most of the past studies. In the
current articles, we briefly review our current photoelectric and photothermal conversions using
transition metal nitrides and transition meal carbides and discuss the future direction.
