No Arabic abstract
Plasmonics can be used to improve absorption in optoelectronic devices and has been intensively studied for solar cells and photodetectors. Graphene has recently emerged as a powerful plasmonic material. It shows significantly less losses compared to traditional plasmonic materials such as gold and silver and its plasmons can be tuned by changing the Fermi energy with chemical or electrical doping. Here we propose the usage of graphene plasmonics for light trapping in optoelectronic devices and show that the excitation of localized plasmons in doped, nanostructured graphene can enhance optical absorption in its surrounding media including both bulky and two-dimensional materials by tens of times, which may lead to a new generation of highly efficient, spectrally selective photodetectors in mid-infrared and THz ranges. The proposed concept could even revolutionize the field of plasmonic solar cells if graphene plasmons in the visible and near-infrared are realized.
We demonstrate that 100% light absorption can take place in a single patterned sheet of doped graphene. General analysis shows that a planar array of small lossy particles exhibits full absorption under critical-coupling conditions provided the cross section of each individual particle is comparable to the area of the lattice unit-cell. Specifically, arrays of doped graphene nanodisks display full absorption when supported on a substrate under total internal reflection, and also when lying on a dielectric layer coating a metal. Our results are relevant for infrared light detectors and sources, which can be made tunable via electrostatic doping of graphene.
Recent progress in nanophotonics is driven by the desire to engineer light-matter interaction in two-dimensional (2D) materials using high-quality resonances in plasmonic and dielectric structures. Here, we demonstrate a link between the radiation control at critical coupling and the metasurface-based bound states in the continuum (BIC) physics, and develop a generalized theory to engineer light absorption of 2D materials in coupling resonance metasurfaces. In a typical example of hybrid graphene-dielectric metasurfaces, we present the manipulation of absorption bandwidth by more than one order of magnitude by simultaneously adjusting the asymmetry parameter of silicon resonators governed by BIC and the graphene surface conductivity while the absorption efficiency maintains maximum. This work reveals the generalized role of BIC in the radiation control at critical coupling and provides promising strategies in engineering light absorption of 2D materials for high-efficiency optoelectronics device applications, e.g., light emission, detection and modulation.
The light absorption of a monolayer graphene-molybdenum disulfide photovoltaic (GM-PV) cell in a wedge-shaped microcavity with a spectrum-splitting structure is investigated theoretically. The GM-PV cell, which is three times thinner than the traditional photovoltaic cell, exhibits up to 98% light absorptivity in a wide wavelength range. This rate exceeds the fundamental limit of nanophotonic light trapping in solar cells. The effects of defect layer thickness, GM-PV cell position in the microcavity, incident angle, and lens aberration on the light absorption rate of the GM-PV cell is explored. Regardless of errors, the GM-PV cell can still achieve at least 90% light absorptivity with the current technology. Our proposal provides different methods to design light-trapping structures and apply spectrum-splitting systems.
Optical trapping describes the interaction between light and matter to manipulate micro-objects through momentum transfer. In the case of 3D trapping with a single beam, this is termed optical tweezers. Optical tweezers are a powerful and non-invasive tool for manipulating small objects, which have become indispensable in many fields, including physics, biology, soft condensed matter, amongst others. In the early days, optical trapping were typically used with a single Gaussian beam. In recent years, we have witnessed the rapid progress in the use of structured light beams with customized phase, amplitude and polarization in optical trapping. Unusual beam properties, such as phase singularities on-axis, propagation invariant nature, have opened up novel capabilities to the study of micromanipulation in liquid, air and vacuum. In this review, we summarize the recent advances in the field of optical trapping using structured light beams.
We demonstrate that graphene placed on top of structured substrates offers a novel approach for trapping and guiding surface plasmons. A monolayer graphene with a spatially varying curvature exhibits an effective trapping potential for graphene plasmons near curved areas such as bumps, humps and wells. We derive the governing equation for describing such localized channel plasmons guided by curved graphene and validate our theory by the first-principle numerical simulations. The proposed confinement mechanism enables plasmon guiding by the regions of maximal curvature, and it offers a versatile platform for manipulating light in planar landscapes. In addition, isolated deformations of graphene such as bumps are shown to support localized surface modes and resonances suggesting a new way to engineer plasmonic metasurfaces.