Tailoring the morphology of ultrathin bismuth films around percolation for thickness-optimized optical cavities

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how tailoring the morphology of ultrathin bismuth films near the percolation threshold can significantly improve the design and performance of subwavelength optical cavities for color generation and light harvesting.

Contribution

It introduces a method to modify the optical dielectric properties of ultrathin Bi films around percolation, enabling more compact and tunable optical cavities.

Findings

Effective dielectric permittivity changes from negative to positive near percolation.

Discontinuous films enable thinner optical cavities for color generation.

Enhanced optical responses in NIR and visible regions.

Abstract

Ultrathin bismuth films (<10 nm) are emerging candidates for advanced applications in photonics. It has been shown that Bi-based subwavelength optical cavities show outstanding features, including broad tuneable resonances for structural color generation and broadband perfect absorption for light harvesting. While current devices are based on continuous Bi films, integrating ultrathin films around the percolation threshold with a tailored morphology promises to enable more compact devices with a wider tunability range and/or enhanced optical response. In this context, we report the tailoring of the morphology and UV-Vis-NIR effective optical dielectric function ( $\varepsilon$= $\varepsilon_1$+i$\varepsilon_2$) of ultrathin Bi films around the percolation threshold. Just below percolation, the films effective optical permittivity $\varepsilon_1$ differs markedly from that of a continuous film, as it turns from negative to positive while its effective optical loss $\varepsilon_2$ is reduced. We showcase the relevance of such dielectric tunability for the design of enhanced subwavelength optical cavities operating in the NIR and visible regions. In particular, we show that discontinuous near-percolation films enable designing optimized cavities for efficient colour generation with a thickness almost 3 times smaller than what was previously achieved for continuous films.