Metal-oxide plasmonic metamaterials for infrared spectroscopy and thermal management

Abstract

The control and manipulation of the optical properties of plasmonic metamaterials have attracted much interest in the last decade due to the demand for achieving ultracompact, highly efficient, low energy consumption optical devices. However, the optical performance of plasmonic devices is limited by a lack of tunability once fabricated due to the intrinsic properties of conventional plasmonic materials such as Silver and Gold. One of the promising research interests is to utilize tunable materials like metal oxides, which play a particularly important role in the manipulation of electromagnetic radiation for infrared spectroscopy and thermal management. In this thesis, a new patterning technic based on Aluminium-doped Zinc Oxide (AZO) was investigated, and the AZO-based planar Optical Solar Reflector (OSR) device was designed, fabricated, and characterized. Results were compared with conventional physically etched OSR, where it was found that the plasma patterning OSR has a flat surface which owns comparable the same optical response, better mechanical properties, and broader applications. Next, visually transparent thermal emitters based on AZO and phase change material VO₂ were also proposed to achieve high transmittance in the visible range and high thermal emissivity for radiative cooling purpose. For the goal of large-scale manufacturing of thermal management radiative cooling films for both terrestrial and space applications, a new radiative cooler structure was designed and fabricated with the help of Genetic Algorithm (GA). To prove the versatility and robustness of the developed GA, the GA was also applied for the optimizations of two VO₂ -based infrared emissivity tunable device (positive and negative differential emissivity devices) to maximize the emissivity contrast, and the optimization of Distributed Bragg Reflector optimization with broadband visible reflectance and high infrared transparency

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Identifiers

ORCID for Wei Xiao: orcid.org/0000-0002-3898-1110

ORCID for Otto Muskens: orcid.org/0000-0003-0693-5504

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