  Plasmon decay via the surface or interface is a critical process for
practical energy conversion and plasmonic catalysis. However, the relationship
between plasmon damping and the coupling between the plasmon and 2D materials
is still unclear. The spectral splitting due to plasmon-exciton interaction
impedes the conventional single-particle method to evaluate the plasmon damping
rate by the spectral linewidth directly. Here, we investigated the interaction
between a single gold nanorod (GNR) and 2D materials using the single-particle
spectroscopy method assisted with in situ nanomanipulation technique by
comparing scattering intensity and linewidth together. Our approach allows us
to indisputably identify that the plasmon-exciton coupling in the GNR-WSe2
hybrid would induce plasmon damping. We can also isolate the contribution
between the charge transfer channel and resonant energy transfer channel for
the plasmon decay in the GNR-graphene hybrid by comparing that with thin hBN
layers as an intermediate medium to block the charge transfer. We find out that
the contact layer between the GNR and 2D materials contributes most of the
interfacial plasmon damping. These findings contribute to a deep understanding
of interfacial excitonic effects on the plasmon and 2D materials hybrid.
