Facoltà di Ingegneria Civile e Industriale

Eutectic composites are special self-organized materials which offer unexpected electromagnetic properties, richer than those of the constituent materials.  Emilija Petronijevic, Alessandro Belardini, Marco Centini, Grigore Leahu, Roberto Li Voti, Concita Sibilia, and Maria Cristina Larciprete (ICI SBAI), in collaboration with colleagues from the Department of Chemistry, University of Warsaw, and thanks to the Center of Excellence ENSEMBLE3, have investigated ZnO-ZnWO4 eutectic. The light interacting with self-organized microscopic features provides exciting and remarkable optical properties spanning from the visible to the IR range. These properties arise from the crystal orientation of ZnO with respect to the biaxiality of the ZnWO4 matrix. In the visible range, polarization-dependent polarized luminescence occurs for blue light emitted by ZnO. Moreover, the phase matching condition leads to the enhancement of the second harmonic generation of the composite with respect to its constituents. Finally, in the medium infrared spectral region, the composite behaves as a metamaterial with properties that strongly depend on the polarization.

Mre info: https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202206005