Optical Properties of Nanomaterials: Experimental and Computational Studies

A special issue of Nanomaterials (ISSN 2079-4991). This special issue belongs to the section "Nanophotonics Materials and Devices".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 May 2023) | Viewed by 8971

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
1. Higher School of Engineering Physics, Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, Politekhnicheskaya 29, 195251 St. Petersburg, Russia
2. Center for Nanotechnologies, St. Petersburg Academic University (Alferov University), Khlopina 8/3, 194021 St. Petersburg, Russia
Interests: III-V semiconductors; carbon materials; nanophotonics; optoelectronics; epitaixial and nanotechnologies; microfluidics; solar cells; light-emitting diodes; photodectors
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
1. Higher School of Engineering Physics, Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, Politekhnicheskaya 29, 195251 St. Petersburg, Russia
2. Center for Nanotechnologies, St. Petersburg Academic University (Alferov University), Khlopina 8/3, 194021 St. Petersburg, Russia
Interests: III-V; optoelectronics; nanophotonics; epitaixial technologies; solar cells; light-emitting diodes; photodectors

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

A study of the optical properties of nanomaterials is essential in terms of fundamental and practical perspectives. Surface and dimensional confinement effects can significantly alter the optical response, crystal, and electronic structure (band gap engineering) of the structure compared to its bulk counterpart. In turn, nanomaterials can manifest a variety of strong plasmonic and photonic optical resonances that enhance the strength of light–matter interaction. The latter can also be enhanced through the appropriate design of nanostructures with a given periodic arrangement and shape. The interference effects, symmetry-breaking, or non-trivial topology, can lead to the photonic bandgap opening and give rise to highly localized states of light in such materials. Thus, nanomaterials providing strong light localization can control spontaneous emission rate (Purcell effect) and enhance their nonlinear optical response, which is essential for harmonic generation, wave mixing, and all-optical switching. Thus, nanostructures are promising platforms for future quantum optoelectronic applications.

The high surface-to-volume ratio of nanomaterials and, thus, the strong effect of the local environment on the optical and electronic properties provides outstanding advantages for sensor applications (e.g. single-molecule sensing). Functional optical nanomaterials enable the implementation of both active and passive photonic devices and building blocks operating beyond the diffraction limit, such as nanoscale light emitters and detectors, waveguides, frequency mixers, and nonlinear frequency converters.

Modern fabrication approaches involve several advanced technologies combining the bottom-up and top-down approaches, which provide the fabrication of nanostructures with nanometer-scale precision controlled sizes, shapes, and compositions. Material systems consist of (but are not limited to): epitaxial nanoheterostructures and quantum dots, perovskite and complex oxide nanostructures, carbon materials, 2D materials and van der Waals heterostructures, all-dielectric, plasmonic and hybrid nanostructures, and composite and colloidal nanostructured materials.

This Special Issue provides a venue for researchers to discuss the recent progress of nanofabrication techniques for the fabrication of functional optical nanomaterials, as well as their fundamental experimental and computational studies that enable the development of new emerging photonic and optoelectronic applications.

Dr. Ivan Mukhin
Dr. Vladimir V. Fedorov
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • light confinement
  • band gap engineering
  • waveguides
  • optical nanoantennas
  • nanoheterostructures
  • nonlinear response
  • III-V
  • 2D materials
  • perovskites
  • organic materials

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 3721 KiB  
Article
Tuning the Luminescence Response of an Air-Hole Photonic Crystal Slab Using Etching Depth Variation
by Artem V. Peretokin, Dmitry V. Yurasov, Margarita V. Stepikhova, Mikhail V. Shaleev, Artem N. Yablonskiy, Dmitry V. Shengurov, Sergey A. Dyakov, Ekaterina E. Rodyakina, Zhanna V. Smagina and Alexey V. Novikov
Nanomaterials 2023, 13(10), 1678; https://doi.org/10.3390/nano13101678 - 19 May 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1336
Abstract
Detailed studies of the luminescent properties of the Si-based 2D photonic crystal (PhC) slabs with air holes of various depths are reported. Ge self-assembled quantum dots served as an internal light source. It was obtained that changing the air hole depth is a [...] Read more.
Detailed studies of the luminescent properties of the Si-based 2D photonic crystal (PhC) slabs with air holes of various depths are reported. Ge self-assembled quantum dots served as an internal light source. It was obtained that changing the air hole depth is a powerful tool which allows tuning of the optical properties of the PhC. It was shown that increasing the depth of the holes in the PhC has complex influences on its overall photoluminescence (PL) response due to the simultaneous influences of counteracting factors. As a result, the maximal increase in the PL signal of more than two orders of magnitude was obtained for some intermediate, but not full, depth of the PhC’s air holes. It was demonstrated that it is possible to engineer the PhC band structure in such a way as to construct specific states, namely bound states in continuum (BIC), with specially designed dispersion curves being relatively flat. In this case, such states manifest themselves as sharp peaks in the PL spectra, and have high Q-factors which are larger than those of radiative modes and other BIC modes without such a flat dispersion characteristic. Full article
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11 pages, 1426 KiB  
Article
Laser-Activated Second Harmonic Generation in Flexible Membrane with Si Nanowires
by Viktoriia Mastalieva, Vladimir Neplokh, Arseniy Aybush, Vladimir Fedorov, Anastasiya Yakubova, Olga Koval, Alexander Gudovskikh, Sergey Makarov and Ivan Mukhin
Nanomaterials 2023, 13(9), 1563; https://doi.org/10.3390/nano13091563 - 06 May 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1499
Abstract
Nonlinear silicon photonics has a high compatibility with CMOS technology and therefore is particularly attractive for various purposes and applications. Second harmonic generation (SHG) in silicon nanowires (NWs) is widely studied for its high sensitivity to structural changes, low-cost fabrication, and efficient tunability [...] Read more.
Nonlinear silicon photonics has a high compatibility with CMOS technology and therefore is particularly attractive for various purposes and applications. Second harmonic generation (SHG) in silicon nanowires (NWs) is widely studied for its high sensitivity to structural changes, low-cost fabrication, and efficient tunability of photonic properties. In this study, we report a fabrication and SHG study of Si nanowire/siloxane flexible membranes. The proposed highly transparent flexible membranes revealed a strong nonlinear response, which was enhanced via activation by an infrared laser beam. The vertical arrays of several nanometer-thin Si NWs effectively generate the SH signal after being exposed to femtosecond infrared laser irradiation in the spectral range of 800–1020 nm. The stable enhancement of SHG induced by laser exposure can be attributed to the functional modifications of the Si NW surface, which can be used for the development of efficient nonlinear platforms based on silicon. This study delivers a valuable contribution to the advancement of optical devices based on silicon and presents novel design and fabrication methods for infrared converters. Full article
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11 pages, 6822 KiB  
Article
YCl3-Substituted CsPbI3 Perovskite Nanorods for Efficient Red-Light-Emitting Diodes
by Muhammad Imran Saleem, Amarja Katware, Al Amin, Seo-Hee Jung and Jeong-Hwan Lee
Nanomaterials 2023, 13(8), 1366; https://doi.org/10.3390/nano13081366 - 14 Apr 2023
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1996
Abstract
Cesium lead iodide (CsPbI3) perovskite nanocrystals (NCs) are a promising material for red-light-emitting diodes (LEDs) due to their excellent color purity and high luminous efficiency. However, small-sized CsPbI3 colloidal NCs, such as nanocubes, used in LEDs suffer from confinement effects, [...] Read more.
Cesium lead iodide (CsPbI3) perovskite nanocrystals (NCs) are a promising material for red-light-emitting diodes (LEDs) due to their excellent color purity and high luminous efficiency. However, small-sized CsPbI3 colloidal NCs, such as nanocubes, used in LEDs suffer from confinement effects, negatively impacting their photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) and overall efficiency. Here, we introduced YCl3 into the CsPbI3 perovskite, which formed anisotropic, one-dimensional (1D) nanorods. This was achieved by taking advantage of the difference in bond energies among iodide and chloride ions, which caused YCl3 to promote the anisotropic growth of CsPbI3 NCs. The addition of YCl3 significantly improved the PLQY by passivating nonradiative recombination rates. The resulting YCl3-substituted CsPbI3 nanorods were applied to the emissive layer in LEDs, and we achieved an external quantum efficiency of ~3.16%, which is 1.86-fold higher than the pristine CsPbI3 NCs (1.69%) based LED. Notably, the ratio of horizontal transition dipole moments (TDMs) in the anisotropic YCl3:CsPbI3 nanorods was found to be 75%, which is higher than the isotropically-oriented TDMs in CsPbI3 nanocrystals (67%). This increased the TDM ratio and led to higher light outcoupling efficiency in nanorod-based LEDs. Overall, the results suggest that YCl3-substituted CsPbI3 nanorods could be promising for achieving high-performance perovskite LEDs. Full article
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19 pages, 5605 KiB  
Article
Switchable Ultra-Wideband All-Optical Quantum Dot Reflective Semiconductor Optical Amplifier
by Farshad Serat Nahaei, Ali Rostami, Hamit Mirtagioglu, Amir Maghoul and Ingve Simonsen
Nanomaterials 2023, 13(4), 685; https://doi.org/10.3390/nano13040685 - 10 Feb 2023
Viewed by 1675
Abstract
A comprehensive study has been conducted on ultra-broadband optically pumped quantum dot (QD) reflective semiconductor optical amplifiers (QD-RSOAs). Furthermore, little work has been done on broadband QD-RSOAs with an optical pump. About 1 μm optical bandwidth, spanning 800 nm up to 1800 nm, [...] Read more.
A comprehensive study has been conducted on ultra-broadband optically pumped quantum dot (QD) reflective semiconductor optical amplifiers (QD-RSOAs). Furthermore, little work has been done on broadband QD-RSOAs with an optical pump. About 1 μm optical bandwidth, spanning 800 nm up to 1800 nm, is supported for the suggested device by superimposing nine groups of QDs. It has been shown that the device can be engineered to amplify a selected window or a group of desired windows. Moreover, the operation of the device has been thoroughly investigated by solving the coupled differential rate and signal propagation equations. A numerical algorithm has been suggested to solve these equations. As far as we are concerned, a broadband optically pumped QD-RSOA that can operate as a filter has been introduced. Full article
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18 pages, 2991 KiB  
Article
Investigations of Optical Functions and Optical Transitions of 2D Semiconductors by Spectroscopic Ellipsometry and DFT
by Honggang Gu, Zhengfeng Guo, Liusheng Huang, Mingsheng Fang and Shiyuan Liu
Nanomaterials 2023, 13(1), 196; https://doi.org/10.3390/nano13010196 - 01 Jan 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1923
Abstract
Optical functions and transitions are essential for a material to reveal the light–matter interactions and promote its applications. Here, we propose a quantitative strategy to systematically identify the critical point (CP) optical transitions of 2D semiconductors by combining the spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) and [...] Read more.
Optical functions and transitions are essential for a material to reveal the light–matter interactions and promote its applications. Here, we propose a quantitative strategy to systematically identify the critical point (CP) optical transitions of 2D semiconductors by combining the spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) and DFT calculations. Optical functions and CPs are determined by SE, and connected to DFT band structure and projected density of states via equal-energy and equal-momentum lines. The combination of SE and DFT provides a powerful tool to investigate the CP optical transitions, including the transition energies and positions in Brillouin zone (BZ), and the involved energy bands and carries. As an example, the single-crystal monolayer WS2 is investigated by the proposed method. Results indicate that six excitonic-type CPs can be quantitatively distinguished in optical function of the monolayer WS2 over the spectral range of 245–1000 nm. These CPs are identified as direct optical transitions from three highest valence bands to three lowest conduction bands at high symmetry points in BZ contributed by electrons in S-3p and W-5d orbitals. Results and discussion on the monolayer WS2 demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed method, which is general and can be easily extended to other materials. Full article
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