Effective Optical Properties of Plasmonic Nanocomposites

Materials

Christoph Etrich³  Stephan Fahr³  Mehdi Keshavarz Hedayati¹  Franz Faupel²  Mady Elbahri¹ 

[1] Nanochemistry and Nanoengineering, Institute for Materials Science, Faculty of Engineering, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Kaiserstrasse 2, 24143 Kiel, Germany; E-Mails:;Chair for Multicomponent Materials, Institute for Materials Science, Faculty of Engineering, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Kaiserstrasse 2, Kiel 24143, Germany; E-Mail:;Institute of Condensed Matter Theory and Optics, Abbe Center of Photonics, Friedrich-Schiller-Universit¨at Jena, Max-Wien-Platz 1, 07743 Jena, Germany; E-Mails:

关键词: nanocomposite;    plasmonics;    metamaterials;    homogenization;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ma7020727

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Plasmonic nanocomposites find many applications, such as nanometric coatings in emerging fields, such as optotronics, photovoltaics or integrated optics. To make use of their ability to affect light propagation in an unprecedented manner, plasmonic nanocomposites should consist of densely packed metallic nanoparticles. This causes a major challenge for their theoretical description, since the reliable assignment of effective optical properties with established effective medium theories is no longer possible. Established theories, e.g., the Maxwell-Garnett formalism, are only applicable for strongly diluted nanocomposites. This effective description, however, is a prerequisite to consider plasmonic nanocomposites in the design of optical devices. Here, we mitigate this problem and use full wave optical simulations to assign effective properties to plasmonic nanocomposites with filling fractions close to the percolation threshold. We show that these effective properties can be used to properly predict the optical action of functional devices that contain nanocomposites in their design. With this contribution we pave the way to consider plasmonic nanocomposites comparably to ordinary materials in the design of optical elements.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland