Flexible thin-film black gold membranes with ultrabroadband plasmonic nanofocusing for efficient solar vapour generation

By Kyuyoung Bae, G. Kang, S. Cho, W. Park, Kyoungsik Kim, Willie J Padilla. Nature Communications, 2015

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Solar steam generation has been achieved by surface plasmon heating with metallic nanoshells or nanoparticles, which have inherently narrow absorption bandwidth. For efficient light-to-heat conversion from a wider solar spectrum, we employ adiabatic plasmonic nanofocusing to attain both polarization-independent ultrabroadband light absorption and high plasmon dissipation loss. Here we demonstrate large area, flexible thin-film black gold membranes, which have multiscale structures of varying metallic nanoscale gaps (0–200 nm) as well as microscale funnel structures. The adiabatic nanofocusing of self-aggregated metallic nanowire bundle arrays produces average absorption of 91% at 400–2,500 nm and the microscale funnel structures lead to average reflection of 7% at 2.5–17 μm. This membrane allows heat localization within the few micrometre-thick layer and continuous water provision through micropores. We efficiently generate water vapour with solar thermal conversion efficiency up to 57% at 20 kW m−2. This new structure has a variety of applications in solar energy harvesting, thermoplasmonics and related technologies. Efficient steam generation under solar irradiation is of interest for energy harvesting applications. Here, Bae et al. develop a plasmonic nanofocusing film consisting of metal coated alumina nanowires to efficiently generate solar vapour with an efficiency up to 57% at 20 kWm−2.

Subfields: Civil and Structural Engineering, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d0d76ff20d3602fdb134208e99f20781f108ad51

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