{
  "abstract": "Sodium has been proven to be a plasmonic material superior to noble metals. However, its high chemical reactivity poses a major obstacle to direct nanopatterning via conventional techniques, hindering the pursuit of sodium metasurfaces that simultaneously deliver high coupling efficiency and high quality factor. In this work, we developed a nanocast sodium-argon metasurface by rapidly cooling liquid sodium on a polymethyl methacrylate nanomold. This metasurface supports high-Q plasmonic resonances with record-high performance, surpassing previously reported alkali metal plasmonic systems. The liquid sodium consistently maintains an ultra-low filling depth regardless of the mold depth, which not only creates a nonlocal photonic configuration but also affords precise control over the radiative-to-dissipative loss ratio. Such casting behavior enables the metasurface to transition from under-coupling to critical-coupling regimes, thereby achieving high-efficiency, tunable second harmonic generation. We further provide direct experimental evidence that sodium outperforms silver in nonlinear optical performance. By leveraging the robustness inherent to the nonlocal nanocasting technique for sodium-argon metasurfaces, we demonstrate a large-area second harmonic generation metasurface with polarization-switchable imaging. The proposed sodium nanocasting technique opens an alternative avenue for sustainable high-performance plasmonics.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 11,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Yanzhong Wang"
    },
    {
      "name": "Chang-Yin Ji"
    },
    {
      "name": "Haozhe Sun"
    },
    {
      "name": "Yongyue Zhang"
    },
    {
      "name": "Xiaochen Zhang"
    },
    {
      "name": "Ting Wang"
    },
    {
      "name": "Xiaoyang Duan"
    },
    {
      "name": "Jiahua Duan",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-3306-1542"
    },
    {
      "name": "Baohua Jia",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-6703-477X"
    },
    {
      "name": "Yang Wang",
      "orcid": "0000-0003-0455-4126"
    },
    {
      "name": "Jiafang Li",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-9658-8261"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/a2d3v2gzmqe1a.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.1038/s41467-026-79100-9",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "a2d3v2gzmqe1a",
  "issns": [
    "2041-1723"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-79100-9",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "openalex",
      "2504|Metamaterials and Metasurfaces Applications"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7223972939",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-79100-9_reference.pdf",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-27",
  "publisher": "Springer Science and Business Media LLC",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/a2d3v2gzmqe1a.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:17:39Z",
      "native_id": "10.1038/s41467-026-79100-9",
      "source": "crossref",
      "url": "https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-79100-9"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "chemistry",
      "origin": "openalex:2504|Metamaterials and Metasurfaces Applications",
      "subfield": "materials-polymers"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Nanocast sodium metasurfaces for enhanced light-matter coupling",
  "title_text": "Nanocast sodium metasurfaces for enhanced light-matter coupling",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:17:39Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/a2d3v2gzmqe1a",
  "venue": "Nature Communications",
  "versions": []
}