KAUST Scientists Develop Ultra-Thin Silicon Film with Enhanced Light Absorption Using AI

Scientists at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have engineered an ultra-thin silicon film embedded with silver nanorings, achieving a photonic enhancement of over 100% compared to previous light absorbers. This breakthrough, detailed in Light Science & Applications, overcomes the traditional trade-off between material thickness and efficiency by optimizing the interaction between cavity and plasmonic modes.

The innovation lies in the use of concentric silver nanorings within a silicon layer, which generate localized surface plasmons to trap light, enhancing absorption. A key advancement is the application of deep learning, with two neural networks developed to predict absorption spectra and determine optimal design parameters, significantly reducing design time and computational resources.

Professor Ying Wu highlights the precision of this machine learning framework in exploring design spaces. The research's practical applications are vast, including more efficient solar panels, advanced photodetectors for environmental and medical sensing, and improved optical filters for telecommunications. Additionally, this technology could revolutionize healthcare imaging by enabling earlier disease detection.

The team is investigating other geometries for metasurfaces and real-world applications, such as photovoltaic devices. This study not only advances plasmonic meta-absorbers but also demonstrates how AI and physics can transform materials science, offering solutions to global challenges in energy, telecommunications, and healthcare.