ABSTRACT
Achieving the broadband response of metamaterial absorbers has been quite challenging due to the inherent bandwidth limitations. Herein, the investigation was made of a unique kind of visible light metamaterial absorber comprising elliptical rings-shaped fractal metasurface using tungsten metal. It was found that the proposed absorber exhibits average absorption of over 90% in the visible wavelength span of 400-750 nm. The features of perfect absorption could be observed because of the localized surface plasmon resonance that causes impedance matching. Moreover, in the context of optoelectronic applications, the absorber yields absorbance up to ~ 70% even with the incidence obliquity in the range of 0°-60° for transverse electric polarization. The theory of multiple reflections was employed to further verify the performance of the absorber. The obtained theoretical results were found to be in close agreement with the simulation results. In order to optimize the results, the performance was analyzed in terms of the figure of merit and operating bandwidth. Significant amount of absorption in the entire visible span, wide-angle stability, and utilization of low-cost metal make the proposed absorber suitable in varieties of photonics applications, in particular photovoltaics, thermal emitters and sensors.
ABSTRACT
The investigation of core-shell nanoparticles has been greatly exciting in biomedical applications, as this remains of prime importance in targeted drug delivery, sensing, etc. In the present work, the polarizability and scattering features of nanoparticles comprised of nano-sized dielectric/metallic core-shell structures were investigated in the fractional dimensional (FD) space, which essentially relates to the confinement of charged particles. For this purpose, three different kinds of metals-namely aluminum, gold and silver-were considered to form the shell, having a common silicon dioxide (SiO2) nanoparticle as the core. It is noteworthy that the use of noble metal-SiO2 mediums interface remains ideal to realize surface plasmon resonance. The core-shell nanoparticles were considered to have dimensions smaller than the operating wavelength. Under such conditions, the analyses of polarizability and the scattering and absorption cross-sections, and also, the extinction coefficients were taken up under Rayleigh scattering mechanism, emphasizing the effects of a varying FD parameter. Apart from these, the tuning of resonance peaks and the magnitude of surface plasmons due to FD space parameter were also analyzed. It was found that the increase of FD space parameter generally results in blue-shifts in the resonance peaks. Apart from this, the usage of gold and silver shells brings in fairly large shifts in the peak positions of wavelengths, which allows them to be more suitable for a biosensing purpose.
ABSTRACT
A plethora of research in recent years has been reported on biosensing in the surface plasmon resonant systems. However, very little research has reported a tunable and highly sensitive biosensor in a nanoscale platform. In this regard, we propose a nanoscale hyperbolic metamaterial (HMM)-based prism coupled waveguide sensor (PCWS) in the near-infrared range. The HMM layer makes up one of the constituents of the PCWS-comprised of a periodically arranged assembly of silver nanostrips. The structure is numerically simulated by the finite difference time domain method. It is demonstrated that the sensitivity of the reflected light can be tuned through the refractive index (RI) of the solution. Moreover, the effects of alteration of constituents of PCWS on the sensitivity have been analyzed. Results show that the sensitivity of PCWS can be harnessed by altering the thickness, slant angle of HMM layer, volume fraction (f) of metal in the HMM layer, and the incidence angle of light. For this purpose, the structure is numerically simulated by the finite difference time domain method. In the optimum design of the proposed sensor, the maximum value of sensitivity is achieved as high as S=3450 nm/refractive index unit with θ=10° and Ï=10° and a metamaterial thickness of 250 nm. Moreover, the structure has a nanoscale footprint of 600 nm×400 nm×200 nm.
