Broadband infrared absorption enhancement by electroless-deposited silver nanoparticles

Abstract

Decorating semiconductor surfaces with plasmonic nanoparticles (NPs) is considered a viable solution for enhancing the absorptive properties of photovoltaic and photodetecting devices. We propose to deposit silver NPs on top of a semiconductor wafer by a cheap and fast electroless plating technique. Optical characterization confirms that the random array of electroless-deposited NPs improves absorption by up to 20% in a broadband of nearinfrared frequencies from the bandgap edge to 2000 nm. Due to the small filling fraction of particles, the reflection in the visible range is practically unchanged, which points to the possible applications of such deposition method for harvesting photons in nanophotonics and photovoltaics. The broadband absorption is a consequence of the resonant behavior of particles with different shapes and sizes, which strongly localize the incident light at the interface of a high-index semiconductor substrate. Our hypothesis is substantiated by examining the plasmonic response of the electroless-deposited NPs using both electron energy loss spectroscopy and numerical calculations.

Percolation effect of a Cu layer on a MWCNT/PP nanocomposite substrate after laser direct structuring and autocatalytic plating

“…[27][28][29][30] Also, percolation of the thin lm aer the ACD procedure has been explored. [31][32][33] Moreover, the percolation behavior of sheet resistance dependence on the color-difference between sample images aer LISA of precursor additive-free polymer and subsequent electroless Cu deposition procedures have been reported in our previous work. 10 However, there is not scientic work found in literature where percolation effect has been investigated for the Cu layer on nanocomposite material with precursor additives aer LDS and ACD treatment.…”

Flexible and conductive meta-aramid fiber paper with high thermal and chemical stability for electromagnetic interference shielding

“…Generally used methods to prepare silver nanoparticle functionalized materials include electroless plating, electroplating, sputtering method and self-assembly [24][25][26]. Among these methods, electroless plating is the most widely used one due to simple operation, uniform coating and low cost [27][28][29].…”

Optical reconfiguration and polarization control in semi-continuous gold films close to the percolation threshold

“…Furthermore, s-SNOM techniques are usually spectrally limited to a single or a small set of energies which is detrimental to fully characterize the plasmonic eigenmodes of these complex structures. Electron-based spectroscopic techniques such as energy-filtered electron energy-loss spectroscopy in monochromated transmission electron microscopes (TEMs) offers an attractive alternative to access the optical properties of nanometre and subnanometre sized plasmonic structures [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38] . Indeed, the exceptional subnamometre spatial resolution and the broadband excitation spectrum of the electron beam 39,40 has recently been used to spatially map the intrinsic plasmonic eigenmodes in self-similar pristine silver films 37 .…”