Large Area Optics with Silver Nanoparticles

Due to the excitation of localized plasmons silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) strongly interact with optical radiation, and can be combined to layers with sophisticated optical properties. In order to exhaust the possibilities of... [ view full abstract ]

Due to the excitation of localized plasmons silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) strongly interact with optical radiation, and can be combined to layers with sophisticated optical properties. In order to exhaust the possibilities of AgNPs, it is desired to control both their shapes and positions with nanoscale precision. Here, we discuss novel approaches towards cost-efficient large area fabrication of AgNPs layers with recent theoretical and experimental results at hand. First, we demonstrate a mechanical method to build a metasurface with efficient optical broadband absorption. Further on, concepts based on the light-induced growth of AgNPs from liquid phase are presented. As recently shown, the interaction between AgNPs and light leads to a self-alignment process manipulating the morphology of the AgNPs in a way that the resulting structure shows an optimized interaction with the incoming light. This effect occurs due to the interference between the incident radiation and the light scattered by the nanoparticles, which modifies their growth behavior on the substrate^[1]. These findings strongly hint at the possibility to utilize light-induced self-alignment of AgNPs to amplify the interaction of light with a given optical system.

[1]         A. Polywka, C. Tückmantel, P. Görrn, Sci. Rep. 2017, 7, 45144.