Photonic spin-selective perfect absorptance on planar metasurfaces driven by chiral quasi-bound states in the continuum.

Optical metasurfaces with high-quality-factor resonances and selective chirality simultaneously are desired for nanophotonics. Here, an all-dielectric planar chiral metasurface is theoretically proposed and numerically proved to support the astonishing symmetry-protected bound state in the continuum (BIC), due to the preserved π rotational symmetry around the z axis and up-down mirror symmetry simultaneously. Importantly, such BIC is a vortex polarization singularity enclosed by elliptical eigenstate polarizations with non-vanishing helicity, owing to the broken in-plane mirror symmetry. Under the oblique incidence, companied by the BIC transforming into a quasi-BIC (Q-BIC), the strong extrinsic chirality manifests. Assisted by the single-port critical coupling, the planar metasurface can selectively and near-perfectly absorb one circularly polarized light but non-resonantly reflect its counterparts. The circular dichroism (CD) approaching 0.812 is achieved. Intriguingly, the sign of CD (namely, the handedness of the chiral metasurface) can be flexibly manipulated only via varying the azimuthal angle of incident light, due to the periodic helicity sign flip in eigen polarizations around the BIC. Numerical results are consistent with the coupled-mode theory and multipole decomposition method. The spin-selective metasurface absorber empowered by the physics of chiral Q-BICs undoubtedly may promise various applications such as optical filters, polarization detectors, and chiral imaging.

Copper phosphide decorated g-C3N4 catalysts for highly efficient photocatalytic H2 evolution.

Designing functional heterojunctions to enhance photocatalytic hydrogen evolution is still a key challenge in the field of efficient solar energy utilization. Copper phosphides become an ideal material to serve as the cocatalysts during photocatalytic hydrogen evolution by virtue of the lower prices. In this study, we synthesized graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) based catalysts loaded with copper phosphide (Cu3P, Cu97P3), which exhibit superior performance in photocatalytic H2 evolution. Ultraviolet (UV)-visible spectroscopy illustrated that the absorption of light strengthened after the loading of copper phosphide, and the time-resolved transient photoluminescence (PL) spectra showed that the separation and transfer of the photoexcited carriers greatly improved. Moreover, both copper phosphide/g-C3N4 photocatalysts exhibited a relatively high H2 evolution rate: Cu3P/g-C3N4 (maximum 343 µmol h-1 g-1), Cu97P3/g-C3N4 (162.9 µmol h-1 g-1) while copper phosphide themself exhibit no photocatalytic activity. Thus, the copper phosphides (Cu3P, Cu97P3) work as a cocatalyst during photocatalytic H2 evolution. The cycling experiments illustrated that both copper phosphide/g-C3N4 photocatalysts perform excellent stability in the photocatalytic H2 evolution. It is worth noting that while the NaH2PO2 was heated in the tube furnace for phosphorization to obtain Cu3P, the excessive PH3 could pass through the solution of CuSO4 to obtain Cu97P3 at the same time, which significantly improved the utilization of PH3 and reduced the risk of toxicity. This work could provide new strategies to design photocatalysts decorated with copper phosphide for highly efficient visible-light-driven hydrogen evolution.