Xingxing Chen

Ultra-narrow-band light dissipation by a stack of lamellar silver and alumina

An ultra-narrow band absorber consisting of continuous silver and alumina films is investigated. Owing to Fabry–Perot resonance and silvers inherent loss, an ultra-narrow spectral range of light can be entirely trapped in the structure. By varying thicknesses of metallic and dielectric films, absorption peak shifts in visible and near-infrared regions. When two such metal-insulator-metal stacks are cascaded, experimental results show that an ultra-narrow absorption bandwidth of 7 nm is achieved, though theoretical results give that of 2 nm. Features of high-efficiency and ultra-narrow band absorption have huge potential in optical filtering, thermal emitter design, etc.

Grating-assisted enhanced optical transmission through a seamless gold film

In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate enhanced optical transmission through a seamless gold film based on the grating-insulator-metal (GIM) architecture. The transmittance of this GIM structure reaches 40% at 930 nm, showing 3.7 dB and 9.1 dB increase compared with a bare gold film and a continuous metal-insulator-metal stack, respectively. The enhanced transmission is polarization-sensitive and robust for oblique incidence. With tunable transmission peaks, such a device exhibits great potential for applications in optical filtering, polarization detecting and further integration in optoelectronics system.

Large third-order nonlinear refractive index coefficient based on gold nanoparticle aggregate films

Au nanoparticles show large third-order nonlinear effect and ultra-fast response. Here a high nonlinear aggregate film based on self-assembled gold nanoparticles is reported and its third-order nonlinear refractive index coefficient is measured by Z-scan experiment. The third-order nonlinear refractive index coefficient of the Au nanoparticle aggregate film (γ1 = 9.2 × 10−9 cm2/W) is found to be larger than that of an 8-nm-thick sputtered Au film (γ2 = 6.5 × 10−9 cm2/W). This large nonlinear effect can be attributed to the strong field enhancement due to localized plasmon resonances between Au nanoparticles. The result shows that the self-assembled Au nanoparticle aggregate film could be a promising candidate as a third-order nonlinear optical material.

Controlling wave-vector of propagating surface plasmon polaritons on single-crystalline gold nanoplates.

Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) propagating at metal nanostructures play an important role in breaking the diffraction limit. Chemically synthesized single-crystalline metal nanoplates with atomically flat surfaces provide favorable features compared with traditional polycrystalline metal films. The excitation and propagation of leaky SPPs on micrometer sized (10–20 μm) and thin (30 nm) gold nanoplates are investigated utilizing leakage radiation microscopy. By varying polarization and excitation positions of incident light on apexes of nanoplates, wave-vector (including propagation constant and propagation direction) distributions of leaky SPPs in Fourier planes can be controlled, indicating tunable SPP propagation. These results hold promise for potential development of chemically synthesized single-crystalline metal nanoplates as plasmonic platforms in future applications.

Mode Modification of Plasmonic Gap Resonances Induced by Strong Coupling with Molecular Excitons

Plasmonic cavities can be used to control the atom-photon coupling process at the nanoscale, since they provide an ultrahigh density of optical states in an exceptionally small mode volume. Here we demonstrate strong coupling between molecular excitons and plasmonic resonances (so-called plexcitonic coupling) in a film-coupled nanocube cavity, which can induce profound and significant spectral and spatial modifications to the plasmonic gap modes. Within the spectral span of a single gap mode in the nanocube-film cavity with a 3 nm wide gap, the introduction of narrow-band J-aggregate dye molecules not only enables an anticrossing behavior in the spectral response but also splits the single spatial mode into two distinct modes that are easily identified by their far-field scattering profiles. Simulation results confirm the experimental findings, and the sensitivity of the plexcitonic coupling is explored using digital control of the gap spacing. Our work opens up a new perspective to study the strong coupling process, greatly extending the functionality of nanophotonic systems, with the potential to be applied in cavity quantum electrodynamic systems.

Gold nanoparticle transfer through photothermal effects in a metamaterial absorber by nanosecond laser

A non-complicated, controllable method of metallic nanoparticle fabrication at low operating light power is proposed. The method is based on laser-induced forward transfer, using a metamaterial absorber as the donor to significantly enhance the photothermal effect and reduce the operating light fluence to 35 mJ/cm2, which is much lower than that in previous works. A large number of metallic nanoparticles can be transferred by one shot of focused nanosecond laser pulses. Transferred nanoparticles exhibit good size uniformity and the sizes are controllable. The optical properties of transferred particles are characterized by dark-field spectroscopy and the experimental results agree with the simulation results.

Illumination Dependent Optical Properties of Plasmonic Nanorods Coupled to Thin-Film Cavities

The scattering spectra and intensity of gold nanorods placed at varied distances above gold films have been simulated and measured under various conditions, demonstrating that scattering characteristics of the nanorod-film system are highly dependent on illumination conditions. Studying the surrounding electric fields of nanorods reveals that the illumination-dependent properties of the system are induced by the interference in the nanorod-film system. Both simulations and experiments show that optimising the nanorod-film distance can greatly enhance scattering magnitudes up to ~20 times for certain illumination conditions. We propose an application of the studied system in facilitating photo-thermal conversion.

Fluorescence enhancement with metamaterial mirrors

We experimentally demonstrate the strongly enhanced photoluminescence of the fluorescent molecules on the metamaterial mirror. The matematerial mirror can optimize the reflection phase to provide a large electric field for the 20-nm-thick active layer. Compared with the smooth gold plate, the experimental result shows a nearly 45 times enhancement.

Plasmonic enhanced photothermal effects and its applications

We review here our recent studies on plasmonic enhanced photothermal effects in metallic nanostructure, and the applications of such effects. When light is shined on a prefect metamaterial absorber patterned with e-beam lithography, the gold nanoparticles (NPs) forming the absorber can be either transformed to nano-spherical-domes, or to truncated-octahedral shaped or multi-twined nanocrystals with large crystal grain sizes and flat boundary facets. The evolution of morphology and crystallinity of the gold NPs can be also observed. Evidences clearly show that the surface melting and the coalescence mechanism play a key role on nanocrystals formation. These melted gold nanospheres can even be transferred to another substrate, on which the transferred NPs exhibit excellent size uniformity. The strong photothermal effects can also be utilized to tune silicon photonics waveguides and resonators. It is shown that all-optical photothermal switching of Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZI), silicon disk resonators, and silicon ring resonators is possible with the help of plasmonic nanoheaters. The switching response time and power consumption are all at reasonably low level.