Nanocomposite with Polarizonic Reflective Coloration: from Fabrication to Function

A sustainable future requires the exploitation of green and renewable energy sources such as an enhanced utilization of solar energy via solar absorbers. In this context, plasmonic nanostructures "nanodipoles" that are well-known for their unique absorption and scattering properties, have beenpreviously introduced and explored by our group as perfect black solar absorbers. Such devices possess high efficiency when most of the visible spectrum is absorbed, hence dictating their fixed dark appearance. Nevertheless, such a dark appearance becomes aesthetically undesired from thedecorative perspective. Herein, colored perfect solar absorbers with various vivid colors that originate from nanomaterials driven reflection rather than absorption is introduced. Such coloration results from a newly introduced phenomenon that was first reported by our group namely the polarizonic effect. In which disordered oscillating particles along with their cooperative interference action produce specular reflective colors "polarizonic reflective coloration" that has shown immense potential in a variety of advanced applications that are highlighted in this work. For instance the utilization of metallic nanoclusters and nanocomposites to design vividly colored perfect absorbers which can be tuned by engineering the polarizonic reflection resonance (PRR) via simply manipulating the filling factor, size, shape, and type of the nanoparticles in addition to the refractive index of the surrounding medium. Furthermore, flexible solar absorbers on aluminum kitchen foils showing vivid polarizonic reflection colors (PRCs) based on metallicnanocomposite are also presented. Additionally, a perfect solar absorber grounded on a new type of transflective "lossless" oxide metaparticles synthesized by Leidenfrost green nanochemistry is demonstrated. Finally, PRC and the Brewster Wavelength (BW) phenomena were employed asnovel biosensors for both the naked eye and the biodetection of analytes even in a bulk state. Most of the films presented within this work were deposited via magnetron sputtering, which is a simple, cost-effective, scalable, and industrially established method.