Microscopic metallic cubes could unleash the enormous potential of metamaterials to absorb light, leading to more efficient and cost-effective large-area absorbers for sensor applications or energy-harvesting devices.
Metamaterials are man-made materials that have properties often absent in natural materials. They are not so much a conventional material, but a construct that provides exquisite control over the properties of waves, such as light. Creating these materials for visible radiation is still a technological challenge that has traditionally been achieved by lithography, in which metallic patterns are etched onto an inert material, much like an ink-jet printer.
As effective as lithography has been in creating such structures, it does have a limitation – it is very expensive and thus difficult to scale up to the large surface areas that are required for many applications.
For many applications or devices, the key is the material’s ability to control the absorption of waves, such as light. Metals, for example, can be highly reflective on their own, which may be beneficial for some applications, but for something like a solar cells optimal light absorption is desired.
The new metamaterial developed by the Duke team has three major components – a thin layer of gold film coated with a nano-thin layer of an insulator, topped off with a dusting of millions of self-assembled nanocubes. In the case of the current experiments, the nanocubes were fabricated out of silver.
While metals on their own tend to have reflective properties, the nanocubes act as tiny antennae that can cancel out the reflectance of the metal surface.
“By combining different components of the metamaterial elements together into a single composite, more complicated reflectance spectra could be engineered, achieving a level of control needed in more exotic applications, such as dynamic inks,” the researcher said.
This story is reprinted from material from Duke University, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier. Link to original source.