We report on the fabrication and mid-infrared transmission properties of free-standing thin metal films, periodically patterned with holes at periods down to 2 microns and area of 3x3 mm2. Square grids were fabricated by electron beam lithography and deep-etching techniques and display substrateless holes, with the metal being supported by a patterned dielectric silicon nitride membrane. The mid-infrared transmission spectra of the substrateless grid display extraordinary transmission peaks and resonant absorption lines with a Q-factor up to 22. These spectral features are due to the interaction of the radiation with surface plasmon modes. The high transmittivity and the negative value of the dielectric constant at selected frequencies make our substrateless structures ideal candidates for the fabrication of mid-infrared metamaterials.
We present the vertically illuminated Si compatible mid-infrared photodetectors based on graphene that forms negative-index metamaterial. The coupling into a 2D layer at the angles near normal to the surface is negligible without the help of a metamaterial. We propose a low loss metamaterial, the dielectric structure with the nano/microholes through 2D materials that supports a resonance and enhances quantum efficiency in a wide range of incident angles.
We demonstrate thin-film metamaterials with resonances in the mid-infrared wavelength range. Our structures are numerically modeled and experimentally characterized by reflection and angularly-resolved thermal emission spectroscopy. We demonstrate strong and controllable absorption resonances across the mid-infrared wavelength range. In addition, the polarized thermal emission from these samples is shown to be highly selective and largely independent of emission angles from normal to 45 degrees. Experimental results are compared to numerical models with excellent agreement. Such structures hol…
We explore broadband, wide-angle mid-infrared rectification based on nanopatterned hyperbolic metamaterials (HMM), composed of two dissimilar metals separated by a sub-nanometer tunnel barrier. The exotic slow-light modes supported by such periodically trenched HMMs efficiently trap incident radiation in massively parallel metal-insulator-metal tunnel junctions supporting ultrafast optical rectification induced by photon-assisted tunneling. This leads to highly efficient photon-to-electron conversion, orders of magnitude larger than conventional rectennas. Our results promise an impact on infr…
Extreme mid-infrared field enhancement and anapoles in high-index plasmonic metamaterials
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham（伯明翰大学物理与天文学学院）；NanoPhotonics Centre, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge（剑桥大学卡文迪许实验室纳米光子学中心）
Integrated mid-infrared micro-spectrometers have a great potential for applications in environmental monitoring and space exploration. Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) is a promising platform to tackle this integration challenge, due to its unique capability for large volume and low-cost production of ultra-compact photonic circuits. However, the use of SOI in the mid-infrared is restricted by the strong absorption of the buried oxide layer for wavelengths beyond 4 μm. Here, we overcome this limitation by utilizing metamaterial-cladded suspended silicon waveguides to implement a spatial heterodyne F…
We demonstrate, for the first time, an all-dielectric metamaterial resonator in the mid-wave infrared based on high-index tellurium cubic inclusions. Dielectric resonators are desirable compared to conventional metallo-dielectric metamaterials at optical frequencies as they are largely angular invariant, free of ohmic loss, and easily integrated into three-dimensional volumes. With these low-loss, isotropic elements, disruptive optical metamaterial designs, such as wide-angle lenses and cloaks, can be more easily realized.
In this work, a metamaterial selective solar absorber made of nanostructured titanium gratings deposited on an ultrathin MgF2 spacer and a tungsten ground film is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Normal absorptance of the fabricated solar absorber is characterized to be higher than 90% in the UV, visible and, near infrared (IR) regime, while the mid-IR emittance is around 20%. The high broadband absorption in the solar spectrum is realized by the excitation of surface plasmon and magnetic polariton resonances, while the low mid-IR emittance is due to the highly reflective nature of th…
A metamaterial composed of thin metallic strips as an efficient broadband absorber in the mid-infrared spectrum is investigated. Here the matching between dielectric and geometrical properties of the individual elements is critical to ensure high absorption. Detailed theoretical analysis based on the electric dipole approximation is performed to characterize the absorption and scattering properties of the individual elements of the unit cell and the results are used to design the metamaterial composed of such configurations. The absorption cross-section of a strip-shaped element can exceed its…
Near perfect infrared light absorption at multi-spectral wavelengths has been experimentally demonstrated by using multiplexed metal square plasmon resonance structures. Optical power absorption over 95% has been observed in dual-band metamaterial absorbers at two separate wavelengths and optical power absorption over 92.5% has been observed in triple-band metamaterial absorbers at three separate wavelengths. The peak absorption wavelengths are primarily determined by the sizes of the metal squares in the multiplexed structures. Electrical field distributions in the middle of the dielectric sp…
Aligned, densely-packed carbon nanotube metamaterials prepared using vacuum filtration are an emerging infrared nanophotonic material. We report multiple hyperbolic plasmon resonances, together spanning the mid-infrared, in individual resonators made from aligned and densely-packed carbon nanotubes. In the first near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) imaging study of nanotube metamaterial resonators, we observe distinct deeply-subwavelength field profiles at the fundamental and higher-order resonant frequencies. The wafer-scale area of the nanotube metamaterials allows us to combine thi…
Plasmonic metamaterials can be used to enhance mid-infrared sensors and detectors for immunosensing applications. The major challenge is to integrate these technologies in low-cost, compact, and promising platforms. In this study, as an emerging approach, we utilized toroidal resonant plasmonic metasurfaces to develop an ultrasensitive label-free analytical platform for the detection of specific antibiotics in the mid-IR regime. Taking advantage of unique sensitivity of robustly squeezed electromagnetic fields in toroidal meta-atoms, we validated that our proposed technique based on toroidal m…
The management of the abundant eggshell biowaste produced worldwide has become a problematic issue due to the generated odor and microorganisms after directly disposing eggshell biowaste in landfills. Herein, we propose a novel method to convert the hazardous eggshell biowaste to valuable resources for energy management applications. Eggshell-based films are fabricated by embedding eggshell powders into polymer matrix to achieve highly efficient sub-ambient daytime radiative cooling. Benefiting from the Mie scattering of eggshell particles/air pores in the solar spectrum and strong emission of…
Designing broadband metamaterial perfect absorbers is challenging due to the intrinsically narrow bandwidth of surface plasmon resonances. Here, the paper reports an ultra-broadband metamaterial absorber by using space filling Gosper curve. The optimized result shows an average absorptivity of 95.78% from 2.64 to 9.79 μm across the entire mid-infrared region. Meanwhile, the absorber shows insensitivity to the polarization angle and the incident angle of the incident light. The underlying physical principles, used in our broadband absorber, involve a fractal geometry with multiple scales and a …
High-index dielectric materials are in great demand for nanophotonic devices and applications, from ultrathin optical elements to metal-free sub-diffraction light confinement and waveguiding. Here we show that chalcogenide topological insulators are particularly apt candidates for dielectric nanophotonic architectures in the infrared spectral range by reporting metamaterial resonances in chalcogenide crystals sustained well inside the mid-infrared, choosing Bi$_2$Te$_3$ as case study within this family of materials. Strong resonant modulation of the incident electromagnetic field is achieved t…
Noble metals that currently dominate the fields of plasmonics and metamaterials suffer from large ohmic losses. New plasmonic materials, such as doped oxides and nitrides, have smaller material loss, and, using them in place of metals carries promise of reduced-loss plasmonic and metamaterial structures, with sharper resonances and higher field concentration. This promise is put to a rigorous analytical test in this work which reveals that having low material loss is not sufficient to have a reduced modal loss in plasmonic structures. To reduce the modal loss it is absolutely necessary for the…
We investigated numerically the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) behavior with the maximum Q factor is up to 28000 in a metal-dielectric metamaterial. It composed of two layers, a metallic strip as bright mode stacked above a dielectric rod as another bright mode. The coherent coupling between the broad electric dipole induced by the metal strip and the narrow toroidal dipole induced by the dielectric rod leads to the destructive interference, then introduces a transparency window. Interestingly, the EIT window could be effectively influenced by varying parameters of the two laye…
We employ both the effective medium approximation (EMA) and Bloch theory to compare the dispersion properties of semiconductor hyperbolic metamaterials (SHMs) at mid-infrared frequencies and metallic hyperbolic metamaterials (MHMs) at visible frequencies. This analysis reveals the conditions under which the EMA can be safely applied for both MHMs and SHMs. We find that the combination of precise nanoscale layering and the longer infrared operating wavelengths puts the SHMs well within the effective medium limit and, in contrast to MHMs, allows the attainment of very high photon momentum states…
Graphene has emerged as a promising building block in the modern optics and optoelectronics due to its novel optical and electrical properties. In the mid-infrared and terahertz (THz) regime, graphene behaves like metals and supports surface plasmon resonances (SPRs). Moreover, the continuously tunable conductivity of graphene enables active SPRs and gives rise to a range of active applications. However, the interaction between graphene and metal-based resonant metamaterials has not been fully understood. In this work, a simulation investigation on the interaction between the graphene layer an…
We theoretically investigate the interaction between the conductive graphene layer with the dual-spectral electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) metamaterial and achieve independent amplitude modulation of the transmission peaks in terahertz (THz) regime. The dual-spectral EIT resonance results from the strong near field coupling effects between the bright cut wire resonator (CWR) in the middle and two dark double-split ring resonators (DSRRs) on the two sides. By integrating monolayer graphene under the dark mode resonators, the two transmission peaks of the EIT resonance can exhibit …
Negative refraction provides an attractive platform to manipulate mid-infrared and terahertz radiation for molecular sensing and thermal radiation applications. However, its implementation based on available metamaterials and plasmonic media presents challenges associated with optical losses, limited spatial confinement, and lack of active tunability in this spectral range. Here, we demonstrate gate-tunable negative refraction at mid-infrared frequencies using hybrid topological polaritons in van der Waals heterostructures with high spatial confinement. We experimentally visualize wide-angle n…
Optical surface waves, highly localized modes bound to the surface of media, enable manipulation of light at nanoscale, thus impacting a wide range of areas in nanoscience. By applying metamaterials, artificially designed optical materials, as contacting media at the interface, we can significantly ameliorate surface wave propagation and even generate new types of waves. Here, we demonstrate that high aspect ratio (1:20) grating structures with plasmonic lamellas in deep nanoscale trenches function as a versatile platform supporting both surface and volume infrared waves. The surface waves exh…
We theoretically investigate the plasmonic properties of mid-infrared graphene-based metamaterials and apply deep learning of a neural network for the inverse design. These artificial structures have square periodic arrays of graphene plasmonic resonators deposited on dielectric thin films. Optical spectra vary significantly with changes in structural parameters. Our numerical results are in accordance with previous experiments. Then, the theoretical approach is employed to generate data for training and testing deep neural networks. By merging the pre-trained neural network with the inverse n…
High-reflectance in many state-of-the-art optical devices is achieved with noble metals. However, metals are limited by losses, and for certain applications, by their high mass density. Using a combination of ab initio and optical transfer matrix calculations, we evaluate the behavior of graphene-based Å-scale metamaterials and find that they could act as nearly-perfect reflectors in the mid-long wave infrared (IR) range. The low density of states for electron-phonon scattering and interband excitations leads to unprecedented optical properties for graphene heterostructures, especially alterna…
Purcell enhanced electroluminescence of a unipolar light emitting quantum device at 10 micron
Laboratoire de Physique de l’École normale supérieure, ENS, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université Paris Cité（巴黎高等师范学院物理实验室，ENS，巴黎文理研究大学，法国国家科学研究中心，索邦大学，巴黎西岱大学）；III-V Labs, a joint lab between Thales, Nokia and CEA（III-V 实验室，泰雷兹、诺基亚和CEA的联合实验室）；Laboratoire Matériaux et Phénomènes Quantiques, Université Paris Cité（材料与量子现象实验室，巴黎西岱大学）；Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies, Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS（纳米科学与工程中心，巴黎萨克雷大学，法国国家科学研究中心）
Traditionally, efforts to achieve perfect absorption have required the use of complicated metamaterial-based structures as well as relying on destructive interference to eliminate back reflections. Here, we have demonstrated both theoretically and experimentally that such perfect absorption can be achieved using a naturally occurring material, hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) due to its high optical anisotropy without the requirement of interference effects to absorb the incident field. This effect was observed for p-polarized light within the mid-infrared spectral range, and we provide the full …
