Thermo‐Optical Switches Based on Spin‐Crossover Molecules with Wideband Transparency
Résumé
In this work, a thermally tunable optical resonator operating in the visible wavelength range is reported, which consists of a bilayer structure composed of a thin silver layer and a dielectric coating of [Fe(HB(1,2,4-triazol-1-yl)3)2] switchable spin-crossover (SCO) molecules. White light is coupled to the resonant structure using a prism and the resulting resonance spectra are investigated as a function of the incident angle and temperature. Switching the SCO molecules from the low-spin to the high-spin state gives rise to a substantial blueshift of the resonances reaching up to 30 nm (associated with a reflectance modulation of up to 70%), which can be linked, through transfer-matrix simulations, to the variation of the optical thickness of the molecular layer. Interestingly, the study demonstrated that the large thermal tunability of the device also gives rise to a photothermal nonlinearity, which can be leveraged for achieving optical limiting applications. Overall, through the present study, it is shown that molecular SCO nanomaterials can be superior to commonly used thermo-optical switches and well-established optical phase-change materials for applications requiring high broadband optical transparency in the visible spectral domain.
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