RESEARCH ARTICLE

Nanostructured gold films exhibiting almost complete absorption of light at visible wavelengths

  • Hanbin Zheng ,
  • Christine Picard ,
  • Serge Ravaine
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  • CNRS, CRPP, UMR 5031, Université de Bordeaux, F-33600, Pessac, France

Received date: 29 Sep 2017

Accepted date: 31 Jan 2018

Published date: 09 May 2018

Copyright

2018 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature

Abstract

Nanostructured metal surfaces have been known to exhibit properties that deviate from that of the bulk material. By simply modifying the texture of a metal surface, various unique optical properties can be observed. In this paper, we present a simple two step electrochemical process combining electrodeposition and anodization to generate black gold surfaces. This process is simple, versatile and up-scalable for the production of large surfaces. The black gold films have remarkable optical behavior as they absorb more than 93% of incident light over the entire visible spectrum and also exhibit no specular reflectance. A careful analysis by scanning electron microscopy reveals that these unique optical properties are due to their randomly rough surface, as they consist in a forest of dendritic microstructures with a nanoscale roughness. This new type of black films can be fabricated to a large variety of substrates, turning them to super absorbers with potential applications in photovoltaic solar cells or highly sensitive detectors and so on.

Cite this article

Hanbin Zheng , Christine Picard , Serge Ravaine . Nanostructured gold films exhibiting almost complete absorption of light at visible wavelengths[J]. Frontiers of Chemical Science and Engineering, 2018 , 12(2) : 247 -251 . DOI: 10.1007/s11705-018-1710-2

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