Search arXiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2510.07982

Hot-carrier generation in bimetallic Janus nanoparticles

Hanwen Jin·Chengcheng Xiao·Matias Herran·Emiliano Cortes·Shiwu Gao·Johannes Lischner
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Energetic electrons and holes generated from the decay of localized surface plasmons in metallic nanoparticles can be harnessed in nanoscale devices for photocatalysis, photovoltaics or sensing. In this work, we study the generation of such hot carriers in bimetallic Janus nanoparticles composed of Au, Ag and Cu using a recently developed atomistic modelling approach that combines a solution of the macroscopic Maxwell equation with large-scale quantum-mechanical tight-binding models. We first analyze spherical Janus nanoparticles whose unique hot-carrier spectrum can be associated with the spectra of the two hemispheres and the interface coupling and find that under solar illumination the Ag-Au system exhibits the highest hot-carrier generation rate. For dumbbell-shaped Janus nanoparticles, we observe a significant increase in hot-carrier generation with increasing neck size. This is caused by a dramatic enhancement of the electric field in the neck region. We also study the dependence of hot-carrier generation on the light polarization and find that the largest generation rates are obtained when the electric field is perpendicular to the interface between the two metals due to the maximal dipole coupling with the electric field. The insights from our study will guide the experimental design of efficient hot-carrier devices based on bimetallic Janus nanoparticles.

Explore related subjects

physics.opticscond-mat.mtrl-sci

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Hanwen Jin, Chengcheng Xiao, Matias Herran, Emiliano Cortes, Shiwu Gao, Johannes Lischner. 2025-10-09. Hot-carrier generation in bimetallic Janus nanoparticles. https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.07982

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Exoplanet Detection Using Adaptive Quantum-Optimal Measurement

Detecting terrestrial exoplanets in the habitable zones of nearby stars remains a critical challenge. Such planets can be \(10^8\) to \(10^{10}\) times fainter than their host stars and lie at diffraction-limited angular separations, where starlight strongly obscures the companion signal. Here we present an adaptive quantum measurement method for estimating the number, positions, and brightnesses of mutually incoherent point sources in the sub-Rayleigh, ultra-high-contrast regime, operating at contrasts down to \(10^{-8}\) -- five orders of magnitude beyond previous quantum imaging approaches to exoplanet detection. The method adopts a spatial-mode basis that is updated to maximize the quantum Fisher information per detected photon. Estimation is performed by maximum likelihood in log-brightness coordinates, and the source count is determined by Bayesian-information-criterion (BIC) model selection directly from photon-count statistics, without a tunable detection threshold. For point sources within sub-Rayleigh separations and with brightness ratios spanning eight orders of magnitude, the method reconstructs complete scenes with a mean success rate of \(72.5\%\). Furthermore, it is robust to misalignment, maintaining a \(71.3\%\) success rate under offsets of up to six pixels. These results demonstrate that terrestrial exoplanets can be detected below the Rayleigh limit, a regime previously inaccessible to direct imaging.

physics.optics↗
arXiv2026

Research and simulation of analytical polarization control enabled by optical computing on an integrated photonics chip

Dynamic polarization controllers are key devices with broad applications in many fields. However, most on-chip polarization controllers still rely on traditional blind-search methods, whereas analytical optical-computing approaches remain insufficiently explored, particularly with respect to calibration and endless polarization control. With the accurate relative phase of Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) being fully controllable on an integrated photonics chip, we present an analytical polarization control (APC) method using four phase shifters and optical computing, eliminating the need for the traditional inefficient blind-search procedure. The basic structures and operations of APC are clarified. The proposed calibration method and endless control method enable continuous APC while compensating for phase differences within the MZI structures. We simulate the influence of the endless control unit on polarization control and quantify the effect of the fourth phase difference on the output extinction ratio. With the fourth phase shifter, the phase difference encountered during Stokes vector measurement can be effectively compensated, and rotations around all three axes on the Poincaré sphere can be realized. These results establish a practical APC architecture based on optical computing for photonics chips. The proposed APC methods, combined with a FPGA-based hardware acceleration, will enable high speed on-chip polarization controllers.

physics.optics↗
arXiv2026

Optical Mode Sorting with a Programmable Diffractive Neural Network

Programmable diffractive optical processors are particularly attractive for spatial light manipulation because their optical transformations can be dynamically reconfigured and adapted without modifying the physical hardware. However, their practical performance is often limited by the gap between simulation and experiment caused by optical aberrations, alignment errors, and nonideal phase responses. In this paper, we introduce a hybrid optimization framework that combines high-dimensional numerical design with low-dimensional hardware-in-the-loop calibration, enabling programmable diffractive optical networks to compensate experimentally for mismatch without retraining their underlying optical transformations. We demonstrate a programmable optical diffractive neural network (ODNN) designed by back-propagation to spatially sort six linearly polarized modes supported by a multimode fiber. The experimental distortions are represented using a truncated Zernike basis with only 19 correction coefficients per layer. These coefficients are optimized directly on the physical system using stochastic parallel gradient descent, avoiding re-optimization of the full pixelated phase masks. Experimentally, the proposed calibration yields an SNR improvement of approximately 3.26 dB, and a decrease in amplitude error of 0.04. This separation of high-dimensional optical-function design from low-dimensional physical calibration provides a scalable route towards adaptive and reconfigurable spatial-mode processors for optical router on spatial modes and wavelengths, programmable photonic computer systems and quantum information processing.

physics.optics↗