Plasmonic titanium nitride nanomaterials prepared by physical vapor deposition methods.

Titanium nitride (TiN) has recently emerged as an alternative to coinage metals to allow large-scale development of plasmonic applications. In this regard, its optical performance can be conveniently tuned by tailoring the process parameters of physical vapor deposition methods, such as magnetron sputtering and pulsed laser deposition. This review first introduces the fundamental features of TiN and a description on its optical properties, including insights on the main experimental techniques to measure them. Afterwards, magnetron sputtering and pulsed laser deposition are selected as fabrication techniques for TiN nanomaterials. The fundamental mechanistic aspects of both techniques are discussed in parallel with selected case studies from the recent literature, which elucidate the critical advantages of such techniques to engineer the nanostructure and the plasmonic performance of TiN.