Self-Organized Nanostructures Obtained by Bottom-Up Methods as Plasmonic Materials and Metamaterials for VIS and IR Applications

Abstract

Plasmonic materials (Barnes WL, Nature 424:824, 2003) and metamaterials (Smith, Science 305:788–792, 2004) are novel and promising fields for application in photonics, optics and optoelectronics. Engineering of structural and intrinsic properties of the materials lead to achieve controllable light-matter interactions. However, unusual properties of these materials strongly depend on structural features of the media; therefore, novel efficient methods of manufacturing are still sought. Here, we demonstrate our approach to fabricate both plasmonic composites and metamaterials in the melt-based Directional Solidification of Eutectics (DSE) method and advantages resulting from its use (Pawlak, Adv Funct Mater 20(7):1116–1124, 2010).

The presented method opens broad possibilities in the development of novel materials with unusual electromagnetic responses. For example, combining biaxial matrix with uniaxial crystal leads to narrowband and switchable light filtering (Osewski et al, Adv Opt Mater 8(7):1901617, 2020), doping dielectric matrices with plasmonic nanoparticles allows us to achieve tunable Localized Surface Plasmon Resonances in the visible (Sadecka, Opt Express 23(15):19098–19111, 2015) and infrared range (Osewski et al, Adv Opt Mater 8(7):1901617, 2020), and enhanced Raman scattering, which allows us to recognize structural features of the studied matter beyond the diffraction limit (Szlachetko K., Piotrowski P., Nanophotonics 9(14):4309-4317, 2020). A co-doping eutectics with rare earth ions causes enhanced photoluminescence and up-conversion, which could be utilized for example in solar energy conversion cells or optoelectronic devices.