Complete light annihilation in an ultrathin layer of gold nanoparticles

Perfect Absorption and Strong Coupling in Supported MoS2 Multilayers

Perfect absorption and strong coupling are two highly sought-after regimes of light-matter interactions. Both regimes have been studied as separate phenomena in excitonic 2D materials, particularly in MoS₂. However, the structures used to reach these regimes often require intricate nanofabrication. Here, we demonstrate the occurrence of perfect absorption and strong coupling in thin MoS₂ multilayers supported by a glass substrate. We measure reflection spectra of mechanically exfoliated MoS₂ flakes at various angles beyond the light-line via Fourier plane imaging and spectroscopy and find that absorption in MoS₂ monolayers increases up to 74% at the C-exciton by illuminating at the critical angle. Perfect absorption is achieved for ultrathin MoS₂ flakes (4-8 layers) with a notable angle and frequency sensitivity to the exact number of layers. By calculating zeros and poles of the scattering matrix in the complex frequency plane, we identify perfect absorption (zeros) and strong coupling (poles) conditions for thin (<10 layers) and thick (>10 layers) limits. Our findings reveal rich physics of light-matter interactions in bare MoS₂ flakes, which could be useful for nanophotonic and light harvesting applications.

Enhanced Light-Induced Transverse Thermoelectric Effect in Tilted BiCuSeO Film via the Ultra-thin AuNPs Layer

Significant enhancement of light-induced transverse thermoelectric (LITT) effect in tilted BiCuSeO film has been achieved via introduction of an ultra-thin layer of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) with the thickness of a few nanometers. In both cases of pulsed and continuous light irradiation, about two times increment in the LITT voltage sensitivity is observed for the BiCuSeO film coated with 4-nm-thick AuNPs layer. This can be ascribed to the increased photo-thermal conversion efficiency in the LITT effect owing to the efficient usage of the incident light of AuNPs layer. Thicker AuNPs layer will suppress the voltage sensitivity increment due to the electrical connectivity effect. This work provides an effective strategy for optimizing the performance of thermal-type optical detectors based on the LITT effect.

Unusually Sharp Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance in Supported Silver Nanocrystals with a Thin Dielectric Coating

An unusually sharp localized surface plasmon resonance (sLSPR) is observed for a monolayer of glass-supported silver nanocubes coated with a thin, 5-20 nm, Al₂O₃ film. The resonance becomes significantly narrower and stronger while losing optical anisotropy and sensitivity to the surroundings with increasing overlayer thickness. Surface-enhanced Raman scattering excitation profiles indicate an additional enhancement to the electric field brought in by the sLSPR. The resonance is thought to originate from a Fano-like constructive interference between the quadrupolar and dipolar LSPR modes in supported silver nanocubes leading to enhanced light extinction. This phenomenon is of significance for plasmon-induced charge-transfer processes in photovoltaics and catalysis.

Large-Scale Silicon Nanophotonic Metasurfaces with Polarization Independent Near-Perfect Absorption

Optically thin perfect light absorbers could find many uses in science and technology. However, most physical realizations of perfect absorption for the optical range rely on plasmonic excitations in nanostructured metallic metasurfaces, for which the absorbed light energy is quickly lost as heat due to rapid plasmon decay. Here we show that a silicon metasurface excited in a total internal reflection configuration can absorb at least 97% of incident near-infrared light due to interferences between coherent electric and magnetic dipole scattering from the silicon nanopillars that build up the metasurface and the reflected wave from the supporting glass substrate. This "near-perfect" absorption phenomenon loads more than 50 times more light energy into the semiconductor than what would be the case for a uniform silicon sheet of equal surface density, irrespective of incident polarization. We envisage that the concept could be used for the development of novel light harvesting and optical sensor devices.

Role of shape in substrate-induced plasmonic shift and mode uncovering on gold nanocrystals

A number of plasmonic devices and applications, such as chemical and biological sensors, plasmon-enhanced solar cells, optical nanoantennas, metamaterials and metasurfaces, require the deposition of plasmonic metal nanocrystals on various substrates. Because the localized plasmon resonance modes, energies and strengths are strongly dependent on the dielectric function of the surrounding environment, the substrate is expected to largely affect the plasmonic properties of supported metal nanocrystals. Therefore, understanding the effects of the substrate on the plasmonic properties of metal nanocrystals and the roles of the involved factors will be crucial for designing various plasmonic devices that are made of metal nanocrystals deposited on different substrates. Herein we report on our study and results of the effects of substrates with distinct dielectric functions on the plasmonic properties of three types of Au nanocrystals. A combination of experiments and numerical simulations shows that the presence of a substrate causes plasmonic shifts as well as the appearance of new plasmon modes. The plasmonic shifts and the emergence of new plasmon modes are found to be dependent on the particle shape of Au nanocrystals and in turn on the fractional particle surface area that is in contact with the supporting substrate. For Au nanospheres and nanorods, plasmonic shifts, less than 100 nm, are observed on the scattering spectra by changing the supporting substrate from indium tin oxide to silicon. In comparison, a giant spectral shift of more than 300 nm is obtained for Au nanoplates. Moreover, silicon substrates induce the emergence of an out-of-plane quadrupolar mode of Au nanoplates, which interacts with an out-of-plane octupolar mode to give rise to a distinct Fano resonance. The Fano resonance is found to become stronger as the thickness of Au nanoplates is decreased. These results are of great importance for understanding the plasmonic properties of noble metal nanocrystals supported on various substrates, and for designing novel plasmonic nanostructures with desired optical properties and functions.

Continuous-Gradient Plasmonic Nanostructures Fabricated by Evaporation on a Partially Exposed Rotating Substrate

A continuous-gradient approach of material evaporation is employed to fabricate nanostructures with varying geometric parameters, such as thickness, lateral positioning, and orientation on a single substrate. The method developed for mask lithography allows continuous tuning of the physical properties of a sample. The technique is highly valuable in simplifying the overall optimization process for constructing metasurfaces.

Dimer-on-mirror SERS substrates with attogram sensitivity fabricated by colloidal lithography

Nanoplasmonic substrates with optimized field-enhancement properties are a key component in the continued development of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) molecular analysis but are challenging to produce inexpensively in large scale. We used a facile and cost-effective bottom-up technique, colloidal hole-mask lithography, to produce macroscopic dimer-on-mirror gold nanostructures. The optimized structures exhibit excellent SERS performance, as exemplified by detection of 2.5 and 50 attograms of BPE, a common SERS probe, using Raman microscopy and a simple handheld device, respectively. The corresponding Raman enhancement factor is of the order 10(11), which compares favourably to previously reported record performance values.

Silver nanocube aggregation gradient materials in search for total internal reflection with high phase sensitivity

We fabricated monolayer coatings of a silver nanocube aggregation to create a step-wise optical strip by applying different surface pressures during slow Langmuir-Blodgett deposition. The varying amount of randomly distributed nanocube aggregates with different surface coverages in gradient manner due to changes in surface pressure allows for continuous control of the polarization sensitive absorption of the incoming light over a broad optical spectrum. Optical characterization under total internal reflection conditions combined with electromagnetic simulations reveal that the broadband light absorption depends on the relative orientation of the nanoparticles to the polarization of the incoming light. By using computer simulations, we found that the electric field vector of the s-polarized light interacts with the different types of silver nanocube aggregations to excite different plasmonic resonances. The s-polarization shows dramatic changes of the plasmonic resonances at different angles of incidence (shift of 64 nm per 10° angle of incidence). With a low surface nanocube coverage (from 5% to 20%), we observed a polarization-selective high absorption of 80% (with an average 75%) of the incoming light over a broad optical range in the visible region from 400 nm to 700 nm. This large-area gradient material with location-dependent optical properties can be of particular interest for broadband light absorption, phase-sensitive sensors, and imaging.

Anisotropic effective permittivity of an ultrathin gold coating on optical fiber in air, water and saline solutions

The optical properties of an ultrathin discontinuous gold film in different dielectric surroundings are investigated experimentally by measuring the polarization-dependent wavelength shifts and amplitudes of the cladding mode resonances of a tilted fiber Bragg grating. The gold film was prepared by electron-beam evaporation and had an average thickness of 5.5 nm ( ± 1 nm). Scanning electron imaging was used to determine that the film is actually formed of individual particles with average lateral dimensions of 28 nm ( ± 8 nm). The complex refractive indices of the equivalent uniform film in air at a wavelength of 1570 nm were calculated from the measurements to be 4.84-i0.74 and 3.97-i0.85 for TM and TE polarizations respectively (compared to the value for bulk gold: 0.54-i10.9). Additionally, changes in the birefringence and dichroism of the films were measured as a function of the surrounding medium, in air, water and a saturated NaCl (salt) solution. These results show that the film has stronger dielectric behavior for TM light than for TE, a trend that increases with increasing surrounding index. Finally, the experimental results are compared to predictions from two widely used effective medium approximations, the generalized Maxwell-Garnett and Bruggeman theories for gold particles in a surrounding matrix. It is found that both of these methods fail to predict the observed behavior for the film considered.

A thermal plasmonic sensor platform: resistive heating of nanohole arrays

We have created a simple and efficient thermal plasmonic sensor platform by letting a DC current heat plasmonic nanohole arrays. The sensor can be used to determine thermodynamic parameters in addition to monitoring molecular reactions in real-time. As an application example, we use the thermal sensor to determine the kinetics and activation energy for desorption of thiol monolayers on gold. Further, the temperature of the metal can be measured optically by the spectral shift of the bonding surface plasmon mode (0.015 nm/K). We show that this resonance shift is caused by thermal lattice expansion, which reduces the plasma frequency of the metal. The sensor is also used to determine the thin film thermal expansion coefficient through a theoretical model for the expected resonance shift.