Nano Focus: Graphene meets metamaterial
- PDF / 287,330 Bytes
- 1 Pages / 585 x 783 pts Page_size
- 28 Downloads / 269 Views
Graphene meets metamaterial
T
he addition of graphene to a metamaterial can strongly influence the propagation of electromagnetic waves, according to an article published in the January issue of Optics Letters (DOI: 10.1364/ OL.40.000178) by Xiaoyong He, ZhenYu Zhao, and Wangzhou Shi. This team from Shanghai Normal University, China, showed that a metamaterial in combination with graphene has better modulation properties than existing materials in the near-infrared region, and is tunable. This research spans two important areas of materials science. The first, metamaterials, came into prominence because of their interesting properties such as negative refractive index and subsequently super-focusing and extraordinary transmission properties. In popular culture they are linked to invisible cloaks, which H.G. Wells wrote about in an 1897 novel. The unique electromagnetic properties of
Metal unit cell structure SiO2 layer
Vg
Graphene Polyimide substrate Side view of the metamaterial integrated with graphene. Reproduced with permission from Opt. Lett. 40 (2) (2015), DOI: 10.1364/OL.40.000178; p. 178. © 2015 Optical Society of America.
metamaterials stem from the ingenious way they are nanostructured in arrays of structures such as split-ring resonators, crosses, and H sections, rather than their chemical compositions. The second area is graphene, a single atomic layer of carbon, which has been hailed as a wonder material. Its unusual properties include strong confinement of surface plasmons, which are waves propagating across an interface, analogous to the ripples on the surface of a pond when a stone is thrown. The materials system proposed by He and colleagues has a metamaterial that comprises 100-nm-thick silver wires that are configured into Brought to you by the Materials Research Society and a lattice with its Cambridge University Press, Materials360 Online brings all the unit cell in the most important materials science news into one place, saving you time and needless searching. form of a cross. Materials360 Online features original news stories, videos The substrate is and podcasts reported and written by MRS staff, volunteers a 2000-nm-thick and freelancers. The site also provides selective news stories aggregated from many other major scientific publications and polyimide. In bewebsites, so you won’t have to search anywhere else for your tween, there is a materials news. The search stops here! Visit regularly and don’t miss a single day’s worth of valuable news and information. 10-nm-thick layer of silica and a graphene membrane. The graphene is only 0.34-nmYour Search Stops Here! thick, but has a Breaking Research News very significant MRS News influence. He and Hot Topics Featured Journal Articles colleagues studied Videos and Podcasts reflection, absorp Education and Outreach Links tion, and transmis Twitter Feeds And More sion of electrowww.materials360online.com magnetic waves in this structure in the
304
MRS BULLETIN
•
VOLUME 40 • APRIL 2015
•
www.mrs.org/bulletin
frequency r
Data Loading...
