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Performance of photonic devices critically depends upon their efficiency on controlling the flow of light therein. In the recent past, the implementation of plasmonics, two-dimensional (2D) materials and metamaterials for enhanced light-matter interaction (through concepts such as sub-wavelength light confinement and dynamic wavefront shape manipulation) led to diverse applications belonging to spectroscopy, imaging and optical sensing etc. While 2D materials such as graphene, MoS2 etc., are still being explored in optical sensing in last few years, the application of plasmonics and metamaterials is limited owing to the involvement of noble metals having a constant electron density. The capability of competently controlling the electron density of noble metals is very limited. Further, due to absorption characteristics of metals, the plasmonic and metamaterial devices suffer from large optical loss. Hence, the photonic devices (sensors, in particular) require that an efficient dynamic control of light at nanoscale through field (electric or optical) variation using substitute low-loss materials. One such option may be plasmonic metasurfaces. Metasurfaces are arrays of optical antenna-like anisotropic structures (sub-wavelength size), which are designated to control the amplitude and phase of reflected, scattered and transmitted components of incident light radiation. The present review put forth recent development on metamaterial and metastructure-based various sensors.
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An optical slot-antenna-coupled cavity (SAC) framework towards tunable free-space graphene photonic surfaces
The optical conductivity of single layer graphene (SLG) can be significantly and reversibly modified when the Fermi level is tuned by electrical gating. However, so far this interesting property has rarely been applied to free-space two-dimensional (2D) photonic devices because the surface-incident absolute absorption of SLG is limited to 1%–2%. No significant change in either reflectance or transmittance would be observed even if SLG is made transparent upon gating. To achieve significantly enhanced surface-incident optical absorption in SLG in a device structure that also allows gating, here we embed SLG in an optical slot-antenna-coupled cavity (SAC) framework, simultaneously enhancing SLG absorption by up to 20 times and potentially enabling electrical gating of SLG as a step towards tunable 2D photonic surfaces. This framework synergistically integrates near-field enhancement induced by ultrahigh refractive index semimetal slot-antenna with broadband resonances in visible and infrared regimes, ~ 3 times more effective than a vertical cavity structure alone. An example of this framework consists of self-assembled, close-packed Sn nanodots separated by ~ 10 nm nanogaps on a SLG/SiO2/Al stack, which dramatically increases SLG optical absorption to 10%-25% at λ = 600–1,900 nm. The enhanced SLG absorption spectrum can also be controlled by the insulator thickness. For example, SLG embedded in this framework with a 150 nm-thick SiO2 insulating layer displays a distinctive red color in contrast to its surrounding regions without SLG on the same sample under white light illumination. This opens a potential path towards gate-tunable spectral reflectors. Overall, this work initiates a new approach towards tunable 2D photonic surfaces.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1509272
- PAR ID:
- 10201766
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Nano Research
- ISSN:
- 1998-0124
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-3184-z
