Temperature evolution of optical properties in plasmonic metals (Conference Presentation)

Abstract

Understanding the temperature evolution of optical properties in thin metals is critical for rational design of practical metal based nanophotonic components operating at high temperatures in a variety of research areas, including plasmonics and near-field radiative heat transfer. In this talk, we will present our recent experimental findings on the temperature induced deviations in the optical responses of single- and poly-crystalline metal films – gold, silver and titanium nitride thin films - at elevated temperatures upto 900 0C, in the wavelength range from 370 to 2000 nm. Our findings show that while the real part of the dielectric function changes marginally with temperature, the imaginary part varies drastically. Furthermore, the temperature dependencies were found to be strongly dependent on the film thickness and microstructure/crystallinity. We attribute the observed changes in the optical properties to predominantly three physical processes: 1) increasing electron-phonon interactions, 2) reducing free electron densities and, 3) changes in the electron effective mass. Using extensive numerical simulations we demonstrate the importance of incorporating the temperature induced deviations into numerical models for accurate multiphysics modeling of practical high temperature plasmonic components. We also provide experiment-fitted models to describe the temperature-dependent metal dielectric functions as a sum of Drude and critical point/Lorentz oscillators. These causal analytical models could enable accurate multiphysics modeling of nanophotonic and plasmonic components operating at high temperatures in both frequency and time domains.