Titanium Nitride Nanoparticles as Plasmonic Solar Heat Transducers

We demonstrate that lossy plasmonic resonances of nanoparticles are broad enough to cover the majority of the solar spectrum and highly efficient for absorbing sunlight. In analytical calculation, we choose a titanium nitride nanoparticle as a lossy plasmonic nanoresonator and present that sunlight absorption efficiency of a titanium nitride nanoparticle is higher than gold and even black carbon nanoparticles. The experiments demonstrate that titanium nitride nanoparticles dispersed in water have high efficiency to heat water and generate vapor than carbon nanoparticles by converting sunlight into heat. Our results open great possibilities for efficient solar heat applications with titanium nitride nanoparticles.