Nanostructured materials with desired wettability and optical property can play an important role in reducing the energy consumption of oily water treatment technologies. For effective oily water treatment, membrane materials with high strength, sunlight-sensitive anti-fouling, relative low fabrication cost, and controllable wettability are being explored. In the proposed oily water treatment approach, nanostructured TiO2-coated copper (TNS-Cu) meshes are used. These TNS-Cu meshes exhibit robust superhydrophilicity and underwater oleophobicity (high oil intrusion pressure) as well as excellent chemical and thermal stability (≈250 °C). They have demonstrated high separation efficiency (oil residue in the filtrate ≤21.3 ppm), remarkable filtration flux (≥400 kL h−1 m−2), and sunlight-sensitive anti-fouling properties. Both our theoretical analysis and experimental characterization have confirmed the enhanced light absorption property of TNS-Cu meshes in the visible region (40% of the solar spectrum) and consequently strong anti-fouling capability upon direct solar light illumination. With these features, the proposed approach promises great potential in treating produced oily wastewater from industry and daily life.
Ultrathin lossy fi lms have attracted much attention due to their strong interference persisting inside the lossy dielectric fi lm on a refl ective substrate. Here, a plasmon-enhanced ultrathin fi lm broadband absorber is proposed by combining the ultrathin fi lm absorber with localized surface plasmon resonances. This concept can be realized by patterning nanoholes on an absorber comprised of an absorptive ultrathin Ge fi lm and a refl ective Au layer, where the localized surface plasmon mode is activated by metallic pore-shaped holes. The plasmonic enhancement is resulting from the pore-shape localized resonance mode, which increases the optical path length through scattering and concentrates the incident light fi eld near the interface of Ge/Au. The experimental characterization results of a nanoporous ultrathin fi lm absorber, which is fabricated with a scalable laser interference lithography approach, demonstrate its superior light absorption performance. Several materials, such as Ag, Al, and Cu, are proposed as an alternative to Au, and they can also provide plasmonic enhancement to ultrathin fi lms. Furthermore, through an effi cient way to optimize the structural dimensions of the nanoporous ultrathin fi lm absorber, a trilayer system of TiO 2 /Ge/Au achieves the total solar absorptance over 89.3% with a wavelength range of 400-1100 nm.
We experimentally demonstrated an amorphous graphene-based metasurface yielding near-infrared super absorber characteristic. The structure is obtained by alternatively combining magnetron-sputtering deposition and graphene transfer coating fabrication techniques. The thickness constraint of the physical vapor-deposited amorphous metallic layer is unlocked and as a result, the as-fabricated graphene-based metasurface absorber achieves near-perfect absorption in the near-infrared region with an ultra-broad spectral bandwidth of 3.0 µm. Our experimental characterization and theoretical analysis further point out that the strong light-matter interaction observed is caused by localized surface plasmon resonance of the metal film's particle-like surface morphology. In addition to the enhanced light absorption characteristics, such an amorphous metasurface can be used for surface-enhanced Raman scattering applications. Meanwhile, the proposed graphene-based metasurface relies solely on CMOS-compatible, low cost and large-area processing, which can be flexibly scaled up for mass production.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.