Design and Realization of Light Absorbers Using Plasmonic
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Design and realization of light absorbers using plasmonic nanoparticles Ludovic Escoubas, Miriam Carlberg, Judikaël Le Rouzo, Florent Pourcin, Jörg Ackermann, Olivier Margeat, Clement Reynaud, David Duche, Jean-Jacques Simon, Rose-Marie Sauvage, et al. To cite this version: Ludovic Escoubas, Miriam Carlberg, Judikaël Le Rouzo, Florent Pourcin, Jörg Ackermann, et al.. Design and realization of light absorbers using plasmonic nanoparticles. Progress in Quantum Elec- tronics, Elsevier, 2019, 10.1016/j.pquantelec.2018.12.001. hal-01986953 HAL Id: hal-01986953 https://hal-amu.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01986953 Submitted on 19 Jan 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution| 4.0 International License Progress in Quantum Electronics xxx (2019) xxx-xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Progress in Quantum Electronics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com Review Design and realization of light absorbers using plasmonic nanoparticles Ludovic Escoubasa , ∗ , Miriam Carlberga , Judikael Le Rouzoa , Florent Pourcinb , Jorg Ackermannb , Olivier Margeatb , Clement Reynauda , David Duchea , Jean-Jacques Simona , Rose-Marie Sauvagec , Gérard Bergincd a Aix Marseille Univ, Université de Toulon, CNRS, IM2NP, Marseille, France b Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, CINAM, Marseille, France c DGA/DS/MRIS, 75015, Paris, France d Thales Optronics, 78990, Elancourt, France PROOF ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT The applications of light absorbers concern photodetectors, optical filters, solar applications or flexible electronics. In this review, we will detail the application of such light absorbers and we will develop the main demonstrations of the use of metallic nanoparticles embedded within a host matrix to fabricate coatings aiming at harvesting light. We will explain how chemically syn- thetized silver nanoparticles of various shapes (spheres, cubes, …) and sizes allow controlling the optical properties of heterogeneous thin film layers. By coupling the optical characterizations with computer modeling, we will describe how the nanoparticles behave both individually and collectively. To control reflected and absorbed light by thin film layers containing nanoparticles several points have to be addressed: the relation between the shape of the nanoparticle and the absorptance of the layer, the interaction of light between nanoparticles and the collective behav- ior of aggregates. 1. Introduction Many applications require having at disposal or designing materials, which are able to absorb the light, either specifically for some light incidences and spectral ranges chosen by users, or in broad-ranges of incidences and wavelengths. In most appli- cations the efficiency of absorption must be maximal and must be obtained with the thinnest materials, very often in thin lay- ers, and with the wish that these thin layers perfectly fit with the forms of the surfaces they cover. When one wishes to go be- yond the absorption ranges usually found in the materials in their natural state, one possibility is to design new synthetic mate- rials made of alloys of constituents, which are often of complex structures. The structuring of these materials, when the charac- teristic dimensions are close to the wavelengths to be absorbed, greatly influences the properties of absorption in terms of spec- tral range, of angular fields and of efficiency. To build such thin materials, which are ultra-absorbing and not available in nat- ural state, resonance phenomena of light found in Fabry-Perot cavities or plasmonic effects are very useful. These plasmonic ef- fects may appear in the gap between two thin metallic layers, and are called gap plasmons, or on the surface of structured materi- als (called surface plasmons), or even directly at the level of nanoparticles of metal or degenerate semiconductor (called localized plasmons). Thus, it is possible to obtain very strong light absorption with very small amount of material. Furthermore, associat ∗ Corresponding author. Email address: [email protected] (L. Escoubas) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pquantelec.2018.12.001 Available online xxx 0079-6727/ © 2019. L. Escoubas et al. Progress in Quantum Electronics xxx (2019) xxx-xxx PROOF Fig. 1. a) Sketch of a switchable perfect absorber device. Arrays of square aluminum (Al) nanoantennas are stacked above a spacer layer of the phase change material GST-326 and an Al mirror. b) Amorphous to crystalline phase transition in GST. c) SEM images of two representative perfect absorber devices fabricated with antenna side lengths of d = 400 nm and d = 450 nm @Wiley (extracted with permission from ref 7 - https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201502023). Fig. 2. (a) Schematic of the dual-band perfect absorber structure and the incident polarization configuration. (b) A SEM image of the designed structure. @OSA (ex- tracted with permission from ref 8 - https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.19.015221). Fig. 3. Photograph of resonant color filters. @ACS Publications (extracted with permission from ref 10 - https://doi.org/10.1021/ph500410u). ing optical resonators, whose dimensions are close to the wavelength, allows electromagnetic interactions to be obtained, which opens new possibilities of controllingUNCORRECTEDthe light propagation in the materials. The aim of this article is firstly to describe the general working principles of light absorbers based on plasmonic effect, mainly obtained from nanoparticles. In a second step, we discuss the synthesis routes of plasmonic nanoparticles and we show 2 L. Escoubas et al. Progress in Quantum Electronics xxx (2019) xxx-xxx Fig. 4. (a) Schematic of a MIM plasmonic rectenna - (b) SEM image of nanocubes self-assembled into a periodic holed polymer matrix using dithiol molecule linkers localized between the base of the silver nanocubes and the gold surface. PROOF Fig. 5. Schematic of a double-stacked MIM (i.e. MIMIM) photodetectors operating in the near-infrared (NIR) spectrum up to 1200 nm wavelength and presented in ref 17. The MIMIM comprised of metal nanoparticles (MNP), spacer insulator (Ispa), absorbing metal (Mabs), tunneling insulator (Itunnel) and bottom contact metal (Mcont), (b) SEM image of the nanoparticles after annealing 10 nm Silver film for 20 min at 500 °C and (c) the size distribution of particles from SEM image of part (b) @Nature (extracted with permission from Ref. [17] - https://doi.org/10.1038/srep42349). Fig. 6. a) Specular measured and Transfer Matrix Method (TMM) computed reflectances of Ag nanocubes:PVP composite layer deposited on Si* (b) TEM picture of silver nanocubes embedded in PVP c) Optical photograph of the Ag nanocubes:PVP composite on glass substrates. how it is possible to control their shapes, which can be spherical, prismatic or cubic for example, and thus affecting the inter- actions with the light. Then, we present analytical and numerical methods to model the interactions between these nanoparticles and the light waves: Mie theory, Discrete Dipole Approximation (DDA), Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD). The modeling of the light propagation in these complex environments including nanoparticles of various forms requires the measurement of the optical complex indices in order to implement them in the computation codes. So, we will explain how spectroscopic ellipsom- etry measurement associated with Cauchy, Gaussian, or Lorentz models and the theory of effective medium allow extracting the values of the optical complexUNCORRECTEDindices of these composite materials. Finally, we will devote the last part of the article to present achievements in which the light interactions between nanoparticles is exploited in very specific configurations: dimers consisting 3 L. Escoubas et al. Progress in Quantum Electronics xxx (2019) xxx-xxx PROOF Fig. 7. Localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) frequency dependence on free carrier density and doping constraints @Nature (extracted with permission from ref 30 - https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3004). Fig. 8. Seed and nanoparticle growth process. of two nanoparticles interacting in the Kerker's conditions or aggregates of particles (dimers, trimers, multimeres), whose 3D geome- try is perfectly controlled to create spectral absorption bands on the demand. 2. Design of plasmonic light absorbers By definition, a light absorber is a device, whose optical properties are controlled. The specular and the diffuse reflectance, and also the amount of light transmitted through, are minimized. The device absorbs the incident light at a particular wavelength or a broad wavelength domain, ranging from the optical to the longest wavelength domain, and within the broadest solid angle for both linear s and p polarization states. Such absorbers are of interest for many applications, depending on their optical properties, as will be discussed in the following. Because of the large number of applications, extensive research has been done in order to define the optimal design of a light absorber. 2.1. Metal insulator metal (MIM) structure A first highly-efficient