A Tunable Nanoplasmonic Mirror at an Electrochemical Interface

Designing tunable optical metamaterials is one of the great challenges in photonics. Strategies for reversible tuning of nanoengineered devices are currently being sought through electromagnetic or piezo effects. For example, bottom-up self-assembly of nanoparticles at solid | liquid or liquid | liquid interfaces can be used to tune optical responses by varying their structure either chemically or through applied voltage. Here, we report on a fully reversible tunable-color mirror based on a TiN-coated Ag substrate immersed in an aqueous solution of negatively charged Au-nanoparticles (NPs). Switching electrode potential can be used to fully control the assembly/disassembly of NPs at the electrode | electrolyte interface within a 0.6 V wide electrochemical window. The plasmon coupling between the electrode and the adsorbed NP array at high positive potentials produces a dip in the optical reflectance spectrum, creating the "absorber" state. Desorption of NPs at low potentials eliminates the dip, returning the system to the reflective "mirror" state. The intensity and wavelength of the dip can be finely tuned through electrode-potential and electrolyte concentration. The excellent match between the experimental data and the theory of optical response for such system allows us to extract valuable information on equilibrium and kinetic properties of NP-assembly/disassembly. Together with modeling of the latter, this study promotes optimization of such meta-surfaces for building electrotunable reflector devices.