Plasmene Metasurface Absorbers: Electromagnetic Hot Spots and Hot Carriers

Abstract

Light-matter interactions are extremely important, as they sustain life on Earth and can be tailored for diverse applications in areas such as solar energy conversion, chemical sensing, and information storage. One key process of these interactions is the absorption of photons. We demonstrate a novel material capable of absorbing up to 98% of incident visible light. The material comprises a thin sheet of a tightly packed two-dimensional lattice of metal nanoparticles, called plasmene, supported by a thin (subwavelength) dielectric film deposited on top of a mirror. We demonstrate how the resulting metasurface absorbers are useful in surface-enhanced spectroscopy and in the generation of plas..