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Updated: Jun 5, 2025

Excitonic Hamiltonians for Calculating Optical Absorption Spectra and Optoelectronic Properties of Molecular Aggregates and Solids
Published on: May 27, 2020
Tunable narrowband excitonic Optical Tamm states enabled by a metal-free all-organic structure
Miguel Castillo1,2, Diogo Cunha3, Carla Estévez-Varela4
1Natural and Artificial Photonic Structures and Devices Group, INL-International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory, Braga 4715-330, Portugal.
Abstract:
Optical Tamm states (OTS) are confined optical modes that can occur at the interface between two highly reflective structures. However, due to the strong reflectance required, their implementation with highly processable and metal-free flexible materials has proven challenging. Herein, we develop the first structure supporting OTS based only on organic polymeric materials, demonstrating a photonic platform based on non-critical, widely available and easily processable materials. The structures fabricated present large areas and consist of a narrowband multi-layered polymeric distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) followed by a thin film of J-aggregate molecular excitonic material that can act as a highly reflective surface within a narrowband range. We take advantage of the narrowband spectral response of the DBR and of the reflective molecular layer to tune the OTS band by varying the periodicity of the multilayer, opening the door for the fabrication of OTS structures based on lightweight integrable excitonic devices with cost-effective procedures.
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