Review of Plasmonic Nanocomposite Metamaterial Absorber

Abstract

Plasmonic metamaterials are artificial materials typically composed of noble metals in which the features of photonics and electronics are linked by coupling photons to conduction electrons of metal (known as surface _lasmon). These rationally designed structures have spurred interest noticeably since they demonstrate some fascinating properties which are unattainable with naturally occurring materials. Complete absorption of light is one of the recent exotic properties of plasmonic metamaterials which has broadened its application area considerably. This is realized by designing a medium whose impedance matches that of free space while being opaque. If such a medium is filled with some lossy medium, the resulting structure can absorb light totally in a sharp or broad frequency range. Although several types of metamaterials perfect absorber have been demonstrated so far, in the current paper we overview (and focus on) perfect absorbers based on nanocomposites where the total thickness is a few tens of nanometer and the absorption band is broad, tunable and insensitive to the angle of incidence. The nanocomposites consist of metal nanoparticles embedded in a dielectric matrix with a high filling factor close to the percolation threshold. The filling factor can be tailored by the vapor phase co-deposition of the metallic and dielectric components. In addition, novel wet chemical approaches are discussed which are bio-inspired or involve synthesis within levitating Leidenfrost drops, for instance. Moreover, theoretical considerations, optical properties, and potential application of perfect absorbers will be presented.

Gold Cone Metasurface MIC Sensor with Monolayer of Graphene and Multilayer of Graphite

“…Hence, the oscillation of the electrons formed a field inside the metamaterial and also a dipolar field around the peripheral of the metasurface. This potent near field patterns around the subwavelength structures considerably increases the absorptivity [11].…”

Plasmonic Perfect Absorber for Refractive Index Sensing and SERS

“…Perfect absorbers that are made of plasmonic metasurface have drawn considerable interests in the recent years due to novel electric and magnetic properties and due to potential applications including spectral filtering [1], thermal imaging [2], solar power harvesting [3,4], molecular identification, and sensing [5,6]. Numerous structures are proposed and investigated in this regard, manipulating optical absorptivity in the spectral regime of visible to sub-terahertz frequency depending upon the area of interests [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23].…”

Plasmonic metal decorated titanium dioxide thin films for enhanced photodegradation of organic contaminants

“…The same trend was also observed when the order of deposition was changed for the 5 nm Ag film but the change (6.12%) was insignificant as shown in Table 4. The reasons for the better performance of Ag in enhancing TiO 2 photocatalytic activity when deposited on top for both the 2 nm and 5 nm films rather than when it is deposited underneath TiO 2 film could be: (i) Ag absorbs in the UV region hence it created localised surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) which boosted excitation of electrons in TiO 2 [23] and (ii) the oxidation of silver into silver oxide (silver slightly oxidizes to AgO) [24]. The resulting oxide could participate in the photodegradation of methyl orange resulting in high efficiency of the photocatalytic system.…”