Abstract
Frequency-selective scattering of light can be achieved by metallic nanoparticle's localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). And this property may find an application in a transparent projection screen: ideally, specially designed metallic nanoparticles dispersed in a transparent matrix only selectively scatter red, green and blue light and transmit the visible light of other colors. However, optical absorption and surface dispersion of a metallic nanoparticle, whose size is comparable or smaller than mean free path of electrons in the constituent material, degenerate the desired performance by broadening the resonance peak width (i.e., decreasing frequency-selectivity) and decreasing light scattering intensity. In this work, it is shown that the problem can be solved by introducing gain material. Numerical simulations are performed on nanostructures based on silver (Ag), gold (Au) or aluminum (Al) with or without gain material, to examine the effect of gain material and to search for suitable structures for sharp selective scattering of red, green and blue light. And it is found that introducing gain material greatly improves performance of the structures based on Ag or Au except the structures based on Al. The most suitable structures for sharp selective scattering of red, green and blue light are, respectively, found to be the core-shell structures of silica/Au (core/shell), silica/Ag and Ag/silica, all with gain material.
Highlights
The idea of wavelength-selective scattering of light to achieve transparent projection screen has been proposed based on metallic nanoparticle’s localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR),[1,2,3,4] where in the ideal case metallic nanoparticles dispersed in a transparent matrix only selectively scatter red, green and blue light and transmit visible light of other colours
Optimizations based on metallic nanosphere and coreshell structures of metal@silica and silica@metal are conducted for gold (Au), silver (Ag) and aluminium (Al), with and without gain material, with the size effect of metallic nanoparticle on metal’s dielectric function taken into account
Since one gain material only provides gain in a small wavelength range, a negative k over a short wavelength range is more physically meaningful. For those structures with gain material, we have investigated the effect on value of figure of merit (FOM) when replacing the wavelength-independent k with a gaussian-form k
Summary
The idea of wavelength-selective scattering of light to achieve transparent projection screen has been proposed based on metallic nanoparticle’s localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR),[1,2,3,4] where in the ideal case metallic nanoparticles dispersed in a transparent matrix only selectively scatter red, green and blue light and transmit visible light of other colours. Through numerical simulation, we aim to achieve sharp scattering peaks at red, green and blue light, with absorption being maintained low over the visible light range (400 nm ~ 800 nm) based on metallic nanoparticle’s LSPR effect and gain material’s loss compensation. The results from the optimizations show that for the Ag- and Au-based structures, introducing gain material significantly improves the scattering behaviour (i.e., there are sharper scattering peaks at red, green and blue light, respectively, and low absorption over visible light range), the improvement is not significant for the Al-based structures. It is found that the most suitable structures for sharp selective scattering at the red, green and blue light wavelength regions are silica@Au, Ag@silica and silica@Ag, respectively, all with a gain material
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