Nanocast sodium metasurfaces for enhanced light-matter coupling
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.
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BibTeX
@article{wang2026nanocast,
title = {{Nanocast sodium metasurfaces for enhanced light-matter coupling}},
author = {Yanzhong Wang and Chang-Yin Ji and Haozhe Sun and Yongyue Zhang and Xiaochen Zhang and Ting Wang and Xiaoyang Duan and Jiahua Duan and Baohua Jia and Yang Wang and Jiafang Li},
journal = {Nature Communications},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1038/s41467-026-79100-9},
url = {https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-79100-9},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Nanocast sodium metasurfaces for enhanced light-matter coupling
AU - Yanzhong Wang
AU - Chang-Yin Ji
AU - Haozhe Sun
AU - Yongyue Zhang
AU - Xiaochen Zhang
AU - Ting Wang
AU - Xiaoyang Duan
AU - Jiahua Duan
AU - Baohua Jia
AU - Yang Wang
AU - Jiafang Li
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/27
JO - Nature Communications
DO - 10.1038/s41467-026-79100-9
UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-79100-9
AB - 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.
SN - 2041-1723
ER -