Broadband and Highly Directional Visible Light Scattering by Laser-Splashed Lossless TiO2 Nanoparticles

All-dielectric nanoparticles, as the counterpart of metallic nanostructures have recently attracted significant interest in manipulating light-matter interaction at a nanoscale. Directional scattering, as an important property of nanoparticles, has been investigated in traditional high refractive index materials, such as silicon, germanium and gallium arsenide in a narrow band range. Here in this paper, we demonstrate that a broadband forward scattering across the entire visible range can be achieved by the low loss TiO₂ nanoparticles with moderate refractive index. This mainly stems from the optical interferences between the broadband electric dipole and the magnetic dipole modes. The forward/backward scattering ratio reaches maximum value at the wavelengths satisfying the first Kerker’s condition. Experimentally, the femtosecond pulsed laser was employed to splash different-sized nanoparticles from a thin TiO₂ film deposited on the glass substrate. Single particle scattering measurement in both the forward and backward direction was performed by a homemade confocal microscopic system, demonstrating the broadband forward scattering feature. Our research holds great promise for many applications such as light harvesting, photodetection and on-chip photonic devices and so on.