Efficient broadband absorption of visible and near-infrared light by low quality-factor metal-insulator-metal (MIM) resonators using refractory materials is reported. Omnidirectional absorption of incident light for broad angles of incidence and polarization insensitivity are observed for the fabricated MIM resonator. Excellent thermal stability of the absorber is demonstrated at high operating temperatures (800 °C). The experimental broadband absorption spectra show good agreement with simulations. The resonator with 12 nm top tungsten and 100 nm alumina spacer film shows absorbance above 95% in the range of 650 to 1750 nm. The absorption window is tunable in terms of the center wavelength, bandwidth, and the value of maximum absorbance (~98%) by simple variation of appropriate layer thicknesses. Owing to their flexibility, ease of fabrication and low cost, the presented absorbers have the potential for a wide range of applications, including the use in commonly used infrared bands or absorbers for (solar) thermo-photovoltaic energy conversion, where high absorbance and simultaneously low (thermal) re-radiation is of paramount importance.

Top-down fabrication of electron-beam lithography (EBL)-defined metallic nanostructures is a successful route to obtain extremely high electromagnetic field enhancement via plasmonic effects in well-defined regions. To this aim, various geometries have been introduced such as disks, triangles, dimers, rings, self-similar lenses, and more. In particular, metallic dimers are highly efficient for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), and their decoupling from the substrate in a three-dimensional design has proven to further improve their performance. However, the large fabrication time and cost has hindered EBL-defined structures from playing a role in practical applications. Here we present three-dimensional nanostar dimer devices that can be recycled via maskless metal etching and deposition processes, due to conservation of the nanostructure pattern in the 3D geometry of the underlying Si substrate. Furthermore, our 3D-nanostar-dimer-in-ring structures (3D-NSDiRs) incorporate several advantageous aspects for SERS by enhancing the performance of plasmonic dimers via an external ring cavity, by efficient decoupling from the substrate through an elevated 3D design, and by bimetallic AuAg layers that exploit the increased performance of Ag while maintaining the biocompatibility of Au. We demonstrate SERS detection on rhodamine and adenine at extremely low density up to the limit of few molecules and analyze the field enhancement of the 3D-NSDiRs with respect to the exciting wavelength and metal composition.

High temperature stable selective emitters can significantly increase efficiency and radiative power in thermophotovoltaic (TPV) systems. However, optical properties of structured emitters reported so far degrade at temperatures approaching 1200 °C due to various degradation mechanisms. We have realized a 1D structured emitter based on a sputtered W-HfO₂ layered metamaterial and demonstrated desired band edge spectral properties at 1400 °C. To the best of our knowledge the temperature of 1400 °C is the highest reported for a structured emitter, so far. The spatial confinement and absence of edges stabilizes the W-HfO₂ multilayer system to temperatures unprecedented for other nanoscaled W-structures. Only when this confinement is broken W starts to show the well-known self-diffusion behavior transforming to spherical shaped W-islands. We further show that the oxidation of W by atmospheric oxygen could be prevented by reducing the vacuum pressure below 10⁻⁵ mbar. When oxidation is mitigated we observe that the 20 nm spatially confined W films survive temperatures up to 1400 °C. The demonstrated thermal stability is limited by grain growth in HfO₂, which leads to a rupture of the W-layers, thus, to a degradation of the multilayer system at 1450 °C.