We unraveled a novel optical bistable state in amorphous silicon nanocuboids, featuring an abrupt super-linear jump of scattering intensity during hysteretic switching. The effective intensity dependency reaches 19th power, leading to an nonlinear index n2 as large as 5 μm2/mW, 7-order larger than the bulk value and well explained through coupled electromagnetic and photothermal simulation. Combining the ultralarge super-linear response with dark-field laser scanning microscopy, 3.5-times resolution enhancement was achieved, without any need of temporal/spatial excitation modulation. This hysteresis scattering not only sets a benchmark in optical super-resolution technique, but also suggests further optical signal processing potentials.
High-refractive-index (HRI) dielectric metasurfaces have attracted a lot of attention recently due to their advantages of low non-radiative losses and high melting temperatures. Silicon is one of feasible HRI materials that has been widely used in solar cells, photonic waveguides, and photon detectors. However, the band-gap ~ 1 eV makes the quantum efficiency of silicon low at near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths. In this work, a high absorptance device is proposed and realized by using amorphous silicon nanoantenna arrays (a-Si NA arrays) that suppress backward and forward scattering with engineered lattice resonance with Kerker effect. The overlap of electric dipole and magnetic dipole resonances is experimentally demonstrated. The absorptance of a-Si NA arrays increases 3-fold in the near-infrared (NIR) range in comparison to unpatterned silicon films. Nonradiating a-Si NA arrays can achieve high absorptance with a small resonance bandwidth (Q = 11.89) at wavelength 785 nm.
Observing the resonance wavelengths of nanoantennas (NAs) with changing incident angles in TM and TE polarization. Extinction cross section shows the dark and bright coupling modes at resonance wavelength of NAs with symmetry breaking oblique incidence. The plasmonic enhancement is stronger under evanescent wave in total internal reflection.
The plasmonic coupling of nanoantennas could be explained by the plasmon hybridization model introduced. For symmetric nanoparticles pairs, the coupled mode can be shifted to higher or lower frequencies, depending on the phase of the fields from each nanoparticle. In p-polarization, the in-phase response is called bonding mode and out of phase response is called antibonding mode, which are analogous to the molecular orbital theory. The bonding mode, located at a lower energy level, could be strongly excited by normal incidence, but antibonding mode, located at a higher energy level, could hardly excited by normal incident plane wave and which is not easy to be observed. In literatures, the antibonding mode could only be excited by highly focused laser beams, the radiation from a local emitter, and the evanescent field produced by total internal reflection9. Although the observation is not easy, the antibonding mode has brought a lot of attention because of the slower radiative decay and narrower linewidths. However, there are not many researches discussing the sensor application of the plasmonic antibonding mode of nanoantenans arrays.
In this work, gold nanoantennas antibonding mode in TM and TE polarized evanescent field is investigated and the sensitivity to the refractive index change of surrounding medium is compared to bonding mode in normal incidence. Furthermore, in normal incidence, due to the impedance mismatch between the dielectric and substrate, strong reflectance happens at the resonance in bonding mode which could reduce the coupling efficiency. In order to achieve higher energy coupling efficiency, total internal reflection could be used to minimize the impedance mismatch and transfer the input energy into antibonding mode plasmonic resonance.
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