Understanding the interaction between plasmonic nanoparticles and transparent conductive oxides is instrumental to the development of next-generation photovoltaic, opto-electronic and energy-efficient solid-state lighting devices. We investigated the optical response of hybrid media composed of gold nanoparticles deposited on aluminum-doped zinc oxide thin films with varying doping concentration by spectroscopic ellipsometry. The dielectric functions of bare AZO were addressed first, revealing doping-induced effects such as the band-gap shift and the appearance of free carriers. In the hybrid media, a blueshift of the localized surface plasmon resonance of Au NPs as a function of increasing Al-doping of the substrate was observed, ascribed to the occurrence of a charge transfer between the two materials and the doping-dependent variation of the polarizability of the substrate.
Transparent Conductive Oxides (TCOs) are a class of materials that combine high optical transparency with high electrical conductivity. This property makes them uniquely appealing as transparent-conductive electrodes in solar cells and interesting for optoelectronics and infrared-plasmonics applications. One of the new challenges that researchers and engineers are facing is merging optical and electrical control in a single device for developing next-generation photovoltaic, opto-electronic devices and energyefficient solid-state lighting. In this work, we investigated the possible variations …
The efficiency of photo-conductive switches, which continue to be used for the generation and detection of THz waves, has been overlooked for a long time. The so far 'optics-dominated' devices are making their way through to new and emerging fields of research that require ultrafast picosecond voltage pulses, as well as to new applications where power efficiency is of uttermost importance. To address the efficiency problems, in this article we present a novel photo-conductive switch that is based on a 3-dimensional design. In contrast to conventional planar designs, our photo-conductive switch…
The modified rigorous coupled-wave analysis technique is developed to describe the optical characteristics of the plasmonic structures with the grating-gated delta-thin conductive channel in the far- and near-field zones of electromagnetic waves. The technique was applied for analysis of the resonant properties of AlGaN/GaN heterostructures combined with deeply-subwavelength metallic grating which facilitates the excitation of the two-dimensional plasmons in the THz frequency range. The convergence of the calculations at the frequencies near the plasmon resonances is discussed. The impact of t…
Metal nanostructures are key elements in nanooptics owing to their strong resonant interaction with light through local plasmonic charge oscillations. Their ability to shape light at the nanoscale have made them important across a multitude of areas, including biosensing, energy conversion and ultrathin flat metaoptics. Yet another dimension of avenues is foreseen for dynamic nanoantennas, ranging from tuneable metalenses for miniaturized medical devices to adaptable windows that control radiation flows in and out of buildings. However, enabling nano-optical antennas to be dynamically controll…
Thin film solar cells have been attractive for decades in advanced green technology platforms due to its possibilities to be integrated with buildings and on-chip applications. However, the bottleneck issues involved to consider the current solar cells as a major electricity source includes the lower efficiencies and cost-effectiveness. We numerically demonstrate the concept of the absorption enhancement in thin-film amorphous silicon solar cells using the laser beam-induced graphene material based on the insensitive polarization space-filling fractal design as transparent conductive electrode…
Magnetoplasmonics is highly promising to devise active optical elements: modulating the plasmon resonance condition with magnetic field can boost the performance of refractometric sensors and nanophotonic optical devices. Nevertheless, real life applications are hampered by the magnetoplasmonic trilemma: 1) a good plasmonic metal has sharp optical resonances but low magneto-optical response; 2) a magnetic metal has strong magneto-optical response but a very broad plasmonic resonance; 3) mixing the two components degrades the quality of both features. To overcome the trilemma, we use a differen…
We utilize experimental tools such as conductive atomic force microscopy and electrostatic force microscopy on photo-excited arrays of gold nanoparticles on indium tin oxide substrate. The nanoparticles are partially covered by a thin semiconductor polymer. The change in the current and potential profiles of the composite metal-semiconductor sample after excitation at plasmonic resonance frequency of metallic nanoparticles is analyzed.
Transparent conducting oxides (TCO) are emerging as possible alternative constituent materials to replace noble metals such as silver and gold for low-loss plasmonic and metamaterial (MMs) applications in the near infrared (NIR) regime. The optical characteristics of TCOs have been studied to evaluate the functionalities and potential of these materials as metal substitutes in plasmonic and MM devices, even apart from their usual use as electrode materials. However, patterning TCOs at the nanoscale, which is necessary for plasmonic and MM devices, is not well-studied. This paper investigates n…
Recent experiments showed that unity-order index change in a transparent conducting oxide (TCO) can be achieved in a metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) structure by accumulation charge. However, the ultrathin (~5nm) accumulation layer and inherent absorption of TCOs impede the practical applications of this effect. Herein, we propose and explore a novel waveguide, namely "TCO-slot waveguide", which combines both the tunable property of a TCO and field enhancement of a slot waveguide. In particular, light absorption can be sharply enhanced when the slot dielectric constant is tuned close to zero. …
We present theoretical and numerical analysis of a plasmonic-dielectric hybrid system for symmetric and asymmetric coupling between silver cut-wire pairs and silicon grating waveguide with periodic grooves. The results show that both couplings can induce electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT) analogous to the quantum optical phenomenon. The transmission spectrum shows a single transparency window for the symmetric coupling. The strong normal phase dispersion in the vicinity of this transparent window results in the slow light effect. However, the transmission spectrum appears an additi…
Extraordinary optical transmission is observed due to the excitation of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) in 2-Dimensional hexagonal anti-dot patterns of pure Ni thin films, grown on sapphire substrates. A strong enhancement of the polar Kerr rotation is recorded at the surface plasmon related transmission maximum. Angular resolved reflectivity measurements under an applied field, reveal an enhancement and a shift of the normalized reflectivity difference upon reversal of the magnetic saturation (transverse magneto-optical Kerr effect-TMOKE). The change of the TMOKE signal clearly shows the ma…
Plasmonic-cavity Modulator for the Mid-IR with a Semi-transparent and Nonlinear Heavily-doped Semiconductor Mirror
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia（意大利理工学院）；Istituto di Fotonica e Nanotecnologie, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche（国家研究委员会光子和纳米技术研究所）；University of Luxembourg（卢森堡大学）；Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Luxembourg Campus Belval（卢森堡大学贝尔瓦尔校区高等研究院）；Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies (C2N), CNRS UMR 9001, Universit´e Paris-Saclay（巴黎萨克雷大学CNRS 9001联合实验室纳米科学与纳米技术中心）
Recent years have seen increased interest to plasmonic enhancement of nonlinear optical effects, yet there remains an uncertainty of what are the limits of this enhancement. We present a simple and physically transparent theory of plasmonic enhancement of third order nonlinear optical processes achieved in plasmonic structures and show that while huge enhancement of effective nonlinear index can be attained, the most relevant figure of merit, the of phase shift per one absorption length remains very low. This means that while on one hand nonlinear plasmonic materials are not well suitable for …
The optical and electrical properties of optically-thin one-dimensional (1D) Ag nanogratings and two-dimensional (2D) Ag nanogrids are studied, and their use as transparent electrodes in organic photovoltaics are explored. A large broadband and polarization-insensitive optical absorption enhancement in the organic light-harvesting layers is theoretically and numerically demonstrated using either single-layer 2D Ag nanogrids or two perpendicular 1D Ag nanogratings, and is attributed to the excitation of surface plasmon resonances and plasmonic cavity modes. Total photon absorption enhancements …
Grooves were etched in a conductive layer of a conductive, transparent glass, and a nanoporous TiO2 film was deposited on both the conductive and nonconductive area. The width of the grooves was 100 $μ$m and 150 $μ$m. A transparent TiO2 film was dye-sensitized, covered with an electrolyte, and sandwiched with a cover glass. The conductivity of the dye-sensitized TiO2 film permeated with electrolyte was studied in the dark and under illumination, and was observed to be dependent on light intensity, wavelength and applied voltage. This study shows that dye-sensitized nanoporous films can be used…
Quantum aspects, such as electron tunneling between closely separated metallic nanoparticles, are crucial for understanding the plasmonic response of nanoscale systems. We explore quantum effects on the response of the conductively coupled metallic nanoparticle dimer. This is realized by stretching a nanorod, which leads to the formation of a narrowing atomic contact between the two nanorod ends. Based on first-principles time-dependent density-functional-theory calculations, we find a discontinuous evolution of the plasmonic response as the nanorod is stretched. This is especially pronounced …
We study electromagnetic pulse propagation in an indium tin oxide nanolayer in the linear and nonlinear regimes. We use the constitutive relations to reconstruct the effective dielectric constant of the medium, and show that nonlocal effects induce additional absorption resonances and anisotropic dielectric response: longitudinal and transverse effective dielectric functions are modulated differently along the propagation direction, and display different epsilon-near-zero crossing points with a discrepancy that increases with increasing intensity. We predict that hot carriers induce a dynamic …
High-quality factor plasmonic devices are crucial components in the fields of nanophotonics, quantum computing and sensing. The majority of these devices are required to be fabricated on non-lattice matched or transparent amorphous substrates. Plasmonic devices quality factor is mainly defined by ohmic losses, scattering losses at grain boundaries, and in-plane plasmonic scattering losses of a metal - substrate system. Here, we demonstrate the deposition technique to e-beam evaporate ultralow-loss silver thin films on transparent lattice-mismatched substrates. The process is based on evolution…
We theoretically study the characteristics of photoelectron emission in plasmonic nanoparticle arrays. Nanoparticles are partially embedded in a semiconductor, forming Schottky barriers at metal/semiconductor interfaces through which photoelectrons can tunnel from the nanoparticle into the semiconductor; photodetection in the infrared range, where photon energies are below the semiconductor band gap (insufficient for band-to-band absorption in semiconductor), is therefore possible. The nanoparticles are arranged in a sparse rectangular lattice so that the wavelength of the lattice-induced Rayl…
Optical activity is a fundamental phenomenon originating from the chiral nature of crystals and molecules. While intrinsic chiroptical responses of ordinary chiral materials to circularly polarized light are relatively weak, they can be enhanced by specially tailored nanostructures. Here, nanorod metamaterials, comprising a dense array of vertically aligned gold nanorods, is shown to provide significant enhancement of the circular dichroism response of an embedded material. A nanorod composite, acting as an artificial uniaxial crystal, is filled with chiral mercury sulfide nanocrystals embedde…
Here, we study the possibility of selective high-harmonic generation (HHG) based on the concept of charge transfer plasmons (CTP) in bridged nanoparticle assemblies. By choosing plasmonic dimer nanoantenna, as a fundamental member of nanoclusters family, and bridging the gap space between the proximal nanoparticles with an optothermally controllable substance, we selectively produced two different harmonics at different states of the functional bridge. To this end, the conductive connection between the nanoparticles is mediated with Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST), which inherently has opposite optical and el…
This work addresses the integration of reflectarray antennas (RA) on thin film Solar Cell (SC) panels, as a mean to save real estate, weight, or cost in platforms such as satellites or transportable autonomous antenna systems. Our goal is to design a good RA unit cell in terms of phase response and bandwidth, while simultaneously achieving high optical transparency and low microwave loss, to preserve good SC and RA energy efficiencies, respectively. Since there is a trade-off between the optical transparency and microwave surface conductivity of a conductor, here both standard copper and trans…
As alternatives to conventional metals, new plasmonic materials offer many advantages in the rapidly growing fields of plasmonics and metamaterials. These advantages include low intrinsic loss, semiconductor-based design, compatibility with standard nanofabrication processes, tunability, and others. Transparent conducting oxides such as Al:ZnO, Ga:ZnO and indium-tin-oxide (ITO) enable many high-performance metamaterial devices operating in the near-IR. Transition-metal nitrides such as TiN or ZrN can be substitutes for conventional metals in the visible frequencies. In this paper we provide th…
Controlling the phase and amplitude of light emitted by the elements (i.e., pixels) of an optical phased array is of paramount importance to realizing dynamic beam steering for LIDAR applications. In this paper, we propose a plasmonic pixel composed of a metallic nanoantenna covered by a thin oxide layer, and a conductive oxide, e.g., ITO, for use in a reflectarray metasurface. By considering voltage biasing of the nanoantenna via metallic connectors, and exploiting the carrier refraction effect in the metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitor in the accumulation and depletion regions, our simulatio…
Nanophotonics and metamaterials have revolutionised the way we think about optical space (epsilon, mu), enabling us to engineer the refractive index almost at will, to confine light to the smallest of the volumes, and to manipulate optical signals with extremely small footprints and energy requirements. Significant efforts are now devoted to finding suitable materials and strategies for the dynamic control of the optical properties. Transparent conductive oxides exhibit large ultrafast nonlinearities under both interband and intraband excitations. Here, we show that combining these two effects…
Self-assembled Plasmonic Nanoparticle Networks (PNN) composed of chains of 12-nm diameter crystalline gold nanoparticles exhibit a longitudinally coupled plasmon mode cen- tered at 700 nm. We have exploited this longitudinal absorption band to efficiently confine light fields and concentrate heat sources in the close vicinity of these plasmonic chain net- works. The mapping of the two phenomena on the same superstructures was performed by combining two-photon luminescence (TPL) and fluorescence polarization anisotropy (FPA) imaging techniques. Besides the light and heat concentration, we show …
We compare the optical response of isolated nanowires, double-wire systems, and Pi-structures, and show that their radiation is well described in terms of their electric and magnetic dipole moments. We also show that both dielectric permittivity and magnetic permeability can be negative at optical and near infrared frequencies, and demonstrate the connection between the geometry of the system and its resonance characteristics. We conclude that plasmonic nanowires can be employed for developing novel negative-index materials. Finally, we demonstrate that it is possible to construct a nanowire-b…
By combining the large Purcell effect of photonic crystal nanocavity and the strong plasma dispersion effect of the transparent conductive oxides, ultra-compact silicon modulators with heterogeneously integrated indium-tin-oxide (ITO) can potentially achieve unprecedented energy efficiency to atto-joule per bit. In this article, we report the first high-speed silicon nanocavity modulator driven by an ITO gate, achieving 2.2 GHz bandwidth. On-off-key modulation is measured up to 5 Gb/s with only 2 V voltage swing and 18.3 fJ/bit energy efficiency. In addition, we perform in-depth analysis of th…
Recent metamaterial (MM) research faces several problems when using metal-based plasmonic components as building blocks for MMs. The use of conventional metals for MMs is limited by several factors: metals such as gold and silver have high losses in the visible and near-infrared (NIR) ranges and very large negative real permittivity values, and in addition, their optical properties cannot be tuned. These issues that put severe constraints on the device applications of MMs could be overcome if semiconductors are used as plasmonic materials instead of metals. Heavily doped, wide bandgap oxide se…
We propose a scheme for the coupler-free excitation of surface polaritonic solitons and breathers in a planar plasmonic waveguide structure comprising of a transparent layer, a metal layer and a layer of three-level lambda-type atomic medium. In the proposed system, an enhanced Kerr nonlinearity is achieved via electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) in the bottom atomic medium, which can be controlled through proper modulation of the frequency detunings and Rabi frequencies of the driving laser fields. This nonlinearity balances the dispersion in the system, thus providing the necessar…
We consider the space of all causal bulk materials, 2D materials, and metamaterials for maximum near-field radiative heat transfer (RHT). Causality constrains the bandwidth over which plasmonic response can occur, explaining two key traits in ideal materials: small background permittivities (minimal high-energy transitions in 2D materials), and Drude-like free-carrier response, which together optimally yield 10X enhancements beyond the theoretical state-of-the-art. We identify transparent conducting oxides, III-Nitrides, and graphene as materials that should offer nearly ideal near-field RHT r…
Photothermal surface bubbles play important roles in a wide range of applications like catalysis, microfluidics and biosensing, but their formation on a transparent substrate immersed in a plasmonic nanoparticle (NP) suspension has an unknown origin. Here, we show that NPs deposited on the substrate by dispersive optical forces are responsible for the nucleation of such photothermal surface bubbles. High-speed videography shows that the surface bubble formation is always preceded by the optically driven NPs moving toward and adhering to the surface. We observe that the thresholds of laser powe…
From the onset of high-speed optical communications, lithium niobite (LN) has been the material of choice for electro-optic modulators owing to its large electro-optic response, wide transparent window, excellent thermal stability and long-term material reliability. Conventional LN electro-optic modulators while continue to be the workhorse of the optoelectronic industry become progressively too bulky, expensive and power hungry to fully serve the needs of this industry rapidly progressing towards highly integrated, cost-effective and energy efficient components and circuits. Recently develope…
We investigate the collective plasmonic modes in a chain of metallic nanoparticles that are coupled by near-field interactions. The size- and momentum-dependent nonradiative Landau damping and radiative decay rates are calculated analytically within an open quantum system approach. These decay rates determine the excitation propagation along the chain. In particular, the behavior of the radiative decay rate as a function of the plasmon wavelength leads to a transition from an exponential decay of the collective excitation for short distances to an algebraic decay for large distances. Important…
