Solar water heating and vaporization with silicon nanoparticles at mie resonances

Abstract

We propose analytically and demonstrate experimentally that an ensemble of silicon nanoparticles with different sizes can effectively absorb sunlight. Due to the extinction of silicon from UV to near-infrared region, Mie resonances in silicon nanoparticles dramatically enhance the absorption of solar light. In experiment, silicon nanoparticles dispersed in water worked as excellent sunlight-heat transducers that efficiently harvest sunlight to accelerate heating and vaporization of water by nanoscale local heating. Our study opens up the potential of silicon nanoparticles in various solar-thermal applications.