No abstract

Broadband perfect absorbers in the visible region have attracted considerable attention in many fields, especially in solar thermophotovoltaic and energy harvesting systems. However, developing light absorbers with high absorptivity, thermal stability, and a broad bandwidth remains a great challenge. Here, we theoretically and experimentally demonstrate that a titanium nitride metasurface absorber exhibits broadband absorption with an average absorption of more than 92% over a wavelength range of 400 to 750 nm. The increase in absorption is attributed to the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). We demonstrate the plasmon-enhanced visible-light-driven hydrogen production from water using a polymer photocatalyst integrated with a TiN metasurface absorber. A 300% increase in the hydrogen evolution rate was observed due to the LSPR that enhances the rates of light absorption, carrier separation, and hot-carrier transfer in polymer photocatalyst. These results enable a new approach to prepare high-efficiency solar energy harvesting systems.

We demonstrate here the growth of aluminum (Al), copper (Cu), gold (Au), and silver (Ag) epitaxial films on twodimensional, layered muscovite mica (Mica) substrates via van der Waals (vdW) heteroepitaxy with controllable film thicknesses from a few to hundreds of nanometers. In this approach, the mica thin sheet acts as a flexible and transparent substrate for vdW heteroepitaxy, which allows for large-area formation of atomically smooth, single-crystalline, and ultrathin plasmonic metals without the issue of film dewetting. The highquality plasmonic metal films grown on mica enable us to design and fabricate well-controlled Al and Cu plasmonic nanostructures with tunable surface plasmon resonances ranging from visible to the nearinfrared spectral region. Using these films, two kinds of plasmonic device applications are reported, including (1) plasmonic sensors with high effective index sensitivities based on surface plasmon interferometers fabricated on the Al/Mica film and (2) Cu/Mica nanoslit arrays for plasmonic color filters in the visible and near-infrared regions. Furthermore, we show that the responses of plasmonic nanostructures fabricated on the Mica substrates remain unaltered under large substrate bending conditions. Therefore, the metal-on-mica vdW heteroepitaxy platform is suitable for flexible plasmonics based on their bendable properties.

Broadband perfect absorbers in the visible region have attracted considerable attention in many fields, especially in solar thermophotovoltaic and energy harvesting systems. However, developing light absorbers with high absorptivity, thermal stability, and a broad bandwidth remains a great challenge. Here, we theoretically and experimentally demonstrate that transition metal nitride metasurface absorber exhibits broadband absorption with an average absorption of more than 92% over a wavelength range of 400 to 750 nm [1]. The increase in absorption is attributed to the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). We report the plasmon-enhanced visible-light-driven hydrogen production from water using a polymer photocatalyst integrated with a TiN metasurface absorber. A 300% increase in the hydrogen evolution rate was observed due to the LSPR that enhances the rates of light absorption, carrier separation, and hot-carrier transfer in polymer photocatalyst. The concept is extensible to other types of photocatalyst such as 2D materials. We will also discuss the outlook for plasmonic metasurface in applications of solar energy harvesting systems.