Spatially modulated light harvesting with plasmonic crescent metasurface

Area of Science:

• Nanophotonics
• Plasmonics
• Optical Metamaterials

Background:

• Metallic structures with sharp corners, known as photonic singularities, show promise in nanophotonics, sensing, and biomedical fields.
• Achieving high-quality light confinement depends on precise fabrication of nanoscale photonic singularities.
• Current methods face challenges in large-scale integration and cost-effective mask multiplexing for producing massive photonic singularities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a method for massive production of photonic singularities.
• To enable spatially modulated light harvesting in the near-infrared (NIR) spectrum.
• To overcome limitations in integration and cost for photonic singularity fabrication.

Main Methods:

• Utilized angle-dependent elevated nanosphere lithography.
• Fabricated gold crescent arrays of plasmonic materials to construct photonic geometrical singularities.
• Employed numerical simulations and experimental infrared spectral measurements for verification.

Main Results:

• Successfully achieved massive photonic singularities using the novel lithography technique.
• Demonstrated spatially distributed light localization at the fabricated singularities through simulations.
• Experimentally verified the light localization phenomenon via infrared spectral measurements.

Conclusions:

• The developed angle-dependent elevated nanosphere lithography enables massive production of photonic singularities.
• The gold crescent arrays effectively localize light at spatially distributed singularities.
• This work paves the way for integrated light-harvesting devices for applications in illumination, displays, and enhanced nonlinear excitation.