Plasmonic Charge Transfers in Large-Scale Metallic and Colloidal Photonic Crystal Slabs

Abstract

The challenges in plasmonic charge transfer on a large-scale and low losses are systematically investigated by optical designs using 1D-plasmonic lattice structures. These plasmonic lattices are used as couplers to guide the energy in an underneath sub-wavelength titanium dioxide layer, resulting in the photonic crystal slabs. So far, photodetection is possible at energy levels close to the semiconductor bandgap; however, with the observed hybrid plasmonic–photonic modes, other wavelengths over the broad solar spectrum can be easily accessed for energy harvesting. The photo-enhanced current is measured locally with simple two-point contact on the centimeter-squared nanostructure by applying a bias voltage. As lattice couplers, interference lithographically fabricated conventional gold grating provides an advantage in fabrication; this optical concept is extended for the first time toward colloidal self-assembled nanoparticle chains to make the charge injection accessible for large-scale at reasonable costs with possibilities of photodetection by electric field vectors both along and perpendicular to the grating lines. To discuss the bottleneck of unavoidable isolating ligand shell of nanoparticles in contrast to the directly contacted nanobars, polarization-dependent ultrafast characterizations are carried out to study the charge injection processes in femtosecond resolution.