Thermal emission and plasmonic heating from TiN nanowires

Unlike noble metals, refractory plasmonic materials can maintain resilient and attractive optical properties, even at extreme temperatures and high current densities. As such, they have great potential in plasmonic applications such as catalysis, thermoplasmonics, sensors, etc. One refractory plasmonic material of interest is TiN, which exhibits an extremely high melting temperature of about 3000K and noble-metal-like optical properties in the visible to near IR regime, making it attractive for applications in the biological transparency window. Leveraging distinctive tools; tunnel junctions and nanowires, known for their use in exciting plasmon modes, we have investigated the potential of TiN for various plasmonic applications. In this talk, I will briefly our progress in fabricating TiN nanowires and tunnel junctions, highlight challenges and discuss plasmonic heating as well as the recently observed thermal emission in plasmonic TiN nanowires, paving the way for their development as durable and tunable nanoscale light directors for several applications.