Optical properties of thin graphitic nanopetal arrays

Abstract

Thermal radiative properties of thin graphitic petal arrays are theoretically and experimentally investigated. Finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations are first performed to calculate optical properties of vertical graphitic arrays of different structures, namely, graphitic gratings, periodic graphitic cavities, and random graphitic cavities. For graphitic gratings, the absorptance and reflectance are relatively larger when the incident electric field is parallel to the graphitic plane, while the absorptance and reflectance are both significantly lower when the electric field is polarized perpendicular to the graphitic plane. Ordered graphitic petal cavity arrays show optical properties falling between the above two cases of different polarizations. Random vertical cavity arrays with various angles of orientation show similar properties to ordered petal cavities. For oblique gratings, the reflectance will increase with oblique angle for both polarizations, while the absorptance decreases with oblique angle for the in-plane polarization and increases with oblique angle for the out-of-plane polarization. The oblique effects are explained by the strong anisotropic nature of graphitic petals. The FDTD results are compared to effective medium theory to find that the latter describes the optical properties of the graphitic grating and cavity well, and we propose an approach based on effective medium theory to approximate the dielectric function of graphitic petals with random orientation. The predicted hemispherical total reflectance based on this model gives about 2% reflectance in the visible spectrum and agrees well with experimental data from a fabricated graphitic petals sample.