Broadband Light Harvesting Nanostructures Robust to Edge Bluntness

Abstract

Metallic structures with sharp corners harvest the energy of incident light through plasmonic resonances, concentrating it in the corners and greatly increasing the local energy density. Despite its wide array of applications, this effect is normally strongly dependent on how sharp the corners are, presenting problems for fabrication. In this Letter, an analytical approach is proposed, based on transformation optics, to investigate a general class of plasmonic nanostructures with blunt edges or corners. Comprehensive discussions are provided on how the geometry affects the local field enhancement as well as the frequency and energy of each plasmonic resonance. Remarkably, our results evidence the possibility of designing broadband light harvesting devices with an absorption property insensitive to the geometry bluntness.