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Updated: Aug 1, 2026

Design, Fabrication, and Experimental Characterization of Plasmonic Photoconductive Terahertz Emitters
Published on: July 8, 2013
Kirchhoff's metasurfaces towards efficient photo-thermal energy conversion
Yoshiaki Nishijima1,2, Armandas Balčytis3,4,5, Shin Naganuma3
1Department of Physics, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Yokohama National University, 79-5 Tokiwadai, Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama, 240-8501, Japan. nishijima-yoshiaki-sp@ynu.ac.jp.
Abstract:
Thermo-optical properties of the nanodisc and metal hole array plasmonic perfect absorber (PPA) metasurfaces were designed and characterized at mid-infrared wavelengths. Both, radiation emitter and detector systems operating in various spectral domains are highly sought after for a diverse range of applications, one example being future sensor networks employed in the internet-of-things. Reciprocity of the absorbance and emittance is shown experimentally, i.e., the PPAs are demonstrated to follow Kirchhoff's law where the patterns exhibiting a strong optical absorption were found to be effective thermal emitters. Hence, the Kirchhoff's law is experimentally validated for the metasurfaces in the IR spectral domain where there is a lack of solutions for spectrally narrow-band emitters. The highest efficiency of radiation-to-heat and heat-to-radiation conversion was obtained for Au-Si-Au composite structures.
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