title: Facile multifunctional plasmonic sunlight harvesting with tapered triangle nanopatterning of thin films.
abstract: Plasmonic absorbers have recently become important for a broad spectrum of sunlight-harvesting applications exploiting either heat generation, such as in thermal photovoltaics and solar thermoelectrics, or hot-electron generation, such as in photochemical and solid state devices. So far, despite impressive progress, combining the needed high performance with fabrication simplicity and scalability remains a serious challenge. Here, we report on a novel solar absorber concept, where we demonstrate and exploit simultaneously a host of absorption phenomena in tapered triangle arrays integrated in a metal-insulator-metal configuration to achieve ultrabroadband (88% average absorption in the range of 380-980 nm), wide-angle and polarization-insensitive absorption. Furthermore, this absorber is subwavelength in thickness (260 nm) and its fabrication is based on a facile, low-cost and potentially scalable method. In addition, the geometry of our design makes it compatible for both heat and hot electron generation.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Thermodynamics in Emerging Technologies, Institute of Energy Technology, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, ETH Zürich, CH-8092 Zürich, Switzerland. hadi.eghlidi@ltnt.iet.mavt.ethz.ch dpoulikakos@ethz.ch.
authors.forename: Giulia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Tagliabue
authors.forename: Hadi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Eghlidi
authors.forename: Dimos
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Poulikakos