Enhanced Photoluminescence from Organic Dyes Coupled to Periodic Array of Zirconium Nitride Nanoparticles

Abstract

Noble metals, particularly gold, have been conventionally used for their suitable optical properties in the field of plasmonics. However, gold has a relatively low melting temperature, especially when nanosized, and the abundance of gold in the earth’s crust is low. These material-related limitations hinder the exploration of the use of plasmonics in several application areas. Transition metal nitrides are promising material alternatives because of their high mechanical and thermal stabilities, in addition to their acceptable plasmonic properties in the visible spectral region. Zirconium nitride (ZrN) is one such promising alternative owing to a higher carrier density than that of titanium nitride (TiN), which has been the most studied complementary material to gold. In this study, we have fabricated periodic arrays of ZrN nanoparticles and found that the ZrN array enhances the photoluminescence from an organic dye on the array; the photoluminescence intensity is increased by as much as 9.7× in the visible region. This result experimentally verifies that ZrN is useful as an alternative material to gold, to further develop plasmonics, and mitigate the conventional material-related limitations.

Collective lattice resonances in disordered and quasi-random all-dielectric metasurfaces

“…Strong coupling between lattice modes in arrays of nanoparticles (NPs) and Mie-type oscillations localized within a single NP, has attracted significant attention over the last decade. Pioneering theoretical predictions for 1D arrays of Ag NPs [1-3] and consequent experimental verification for 2D arrays of Au NPs [4][5][6] have given a momentum to a great number of excellent applications of collective lattice resonances in lasers [7][8][9][10][11][12], biosensors [13][14][15][16][17][18], emission enhancement [19][20][21][22], and color printing [23][24][25][26].…”

“…To the date, most of the studies have considered diffractive coupling between electric dipole (ED) oscillations and Wood-Rayleigh anomalies [27,28] in arrays of classic plasmonic NPs like Au or Ag. However, quite recently a significant attention has been turned to alternative plasmonic materials like indium-tinoxide [29], aluminum [30][31][32][33], transition metal nitrides [22,34,35], and nickel [36]. The use of these materials makes it possible to tailor a wavelength of collective lattice modes within a wide spectral range, from UV [31] to IR [35], or enable a magnetooptical activity [37,38] which paves the way to a rich variety of novel and promising applications.…”

Guided Mode Resonance in a Low-Index Waveguide Layer

“…Both broad-band [2] and narrow-band [3] GMR filters with high transmittance/reflectance can be achieved by careful design. GMR has been used for filters [4], absorbers [5][6][7][8], sensors [9,10], field enhancement [11,12], spectrometers [13] and optical communications [14].…”

Self-Assembled Dichroic Plasmonic Nitride Nanostructures with Broken Centrosymmetry for Second-Harmonic Generation

“…As a result, only a few experimental works can be found reporting the top-down fabrication of plasmonic devices [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41]. In particular, the patterning methods employed so far for the fabrication of TiN and ZrN nanostructures include direct focused ion beam patterning [34], the combination of electron beam lithography [35][36][37][38] or nanoimprint lithography [39,40] with reactive ion etching, and laser interferometry patterning with wet chemical etching [9,41].…”