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Polarization-selective nanogold absorber by twisted stacking

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Abstract

Metamaterial absorbers show great promise for applications in optical manipulation, photodetection, solar energy harvesting, and photocatalysis. In this work, we present a twisted stacked metamaterial design that serves as a plasmonic perfect absorber with polarization selectivity. Leveraging effective energy localization, the metamaterial realizes a near-unity absorbance of up to 99.6% for right circularly polarized incidence and 97.2% for left circularly polarized incidence. At a longer wavelength in the visible range, the chiral metamaterial becomes more sensitive to the polarization state of the incident wave, retaining an ultrahigh absorption of light (∼94%) for only a given polarization state, that is, light in this polarization state is effectively shielded. A giant circular dichroism signal of up to 7° can be simultaneously observed. Electromagnetic field and charge distribution simulations further reveal that the ultrahigh performance of the design is attributed to the interplay between cavity coupling, magnetic resonances, and plasmonic coupling. Besides switchable and tunable chirality, the plasmonic metamaterial presents a near-perfect absorption band with tunable operational wavelengths. We envision that the high-performance chiral gold metamaterial proposed here can serve as a good candidate for light trapping, chirality sensing, polarized light detection, and polarization-enhanced photocatalysis.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21975060, X. L. W.) and Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS (No. 2019039, X. L. W.). This work was also supported by financial support from the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. XDB36000000, Z. Y. T.), National Key Basic Research Program of China (No. 2016YFA0200700, Z. Y. T.), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 92056204, 21890381, and 21721002, Z. Y. T.), and Frontier Science Key Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. QYZDJ-SSW-SLH038, Z. Y. T.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CAS Key Laboratory of Nanosystem and Hierarchical Fabrication, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Beijing, 100190, China

    Fei Wang, Zexiang Han, Juehan Sun, Wajid Ali, Xiaoli Wang & Zhiyong Tang

  2. School of Future Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Fei Wang & Zhiyong Tang

  3. Center of Materials Science and Optoelectronics Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Juehan Sun, Wajid Ali, Xiaoli Wang & Zhiyong Tang

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  1. Fei Wang
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  2. Zexiang Han
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  3. Juehan Sun
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  5. Xiaoli Wang
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Correspondence to Xiaoli Wang.

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Wang, F., Han, Z., Sun, J. et al. Polarization-selective nanogold absorber by twisted stacking. Nano Res. 16, 10392–10400 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-5518-0

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