MXene Nanostrip Plasmonic Metamaterials for Mechanical Sensing and Enhanced Optical Absorption

Nanocomposites are among the most prominent subjects of material science and enable an enormous number of applications in diverse areas. They are of immense importance for micro and nanoelectronics, sensorics and photonics. They allow one to embed, tailor and program not only the fundamental material properties (a typical example being different metamaterials with traits usually not met in nature) but also to impart multifunctionalities to them. Here we consider a plasmonic metamaterial nanocomposite built of MXene strips suspended in a dielectric host. We numerically analyzed the influence of nanostrip orientation and ordering on the metamaterial properties. We utilized finite element method (FEM) for our electromagnetic simulations. We enhanced our stochastic nanocomposite metamaterial structure by adding a conductive backplate to further increase its optical absorption. The proposed multifunctional MXene-based metametamaterials can be used as a basis for refractometric sensors of any physical quantity that can modify nanostrips orientation, including mechanical sensing. Combining traditional and novel plasmonic approach to optical absorbers structure allows for a relatively simple “bottom up” approach to broadband optical superabsorber design