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Tunable infrared plasmonic devices using graphene/insulator stacks

Nature Nanotechnology volume 7, pages 330–334 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

The collective oscillation of carriers—the plasmon1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17—in graphene has many desirable properties, including tunability and low loss11,12,13,14,16,17. However, in single-layer graphene, the dependence on carrier concentration of both the plasmonic resonance frequency and magnitude is relatively weak16,17, limiting its applications in photonics. Here, we demonstrate transparent photonic devices based on graphene/insulator stacks, which are formed by depositing alternating wafer-scale graphene sheets and thin insulating layers, then patterning them together into photonic-crystal-like structures18. We show experimentally that the plasmon in such stacks is unambiguously non-classical. Compared with doping in single-layer graphene, distributing carriers into multiple graphene layers effectively enhances the plasmonic resonance frequency and magnitude, which is different from the effect in a conventional semiconductor superlattice3,4 and is a direct consequence of the unique carrier density scaling law of the plasmonic resonance of Dirac fermions8,16. Using patterned graphene/insulator stacks, we demonstrate widely tunable far-infrared notch filters with 8.2 dB rejection ratios and terahertz linear polarizers with 9.5 dB extinction ratios. An unpatterned stack consisting of five graphene layers shields 97.5% of electromagnetic radiation at frequencies below 1.2 THz. This work could lead to the development of transparent mid- and far-infrared photonic devices such as detectors, modulators and three-dimensional metamaterial systems19,20.

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Figure 1: Fabrication of transparent graphene plasmonic devices.
Figure 2: Electromagnetic wave shielding using as-prepared transparent graphene/insulator stacks.
Figure 3: Plasmons in patterned graphene/insulator stacks at the strong coupling limit.
Figure 4: Transparent far-infrared filters and terahertz polarizers.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to B. Ek and J. Bucchignano for technical assistance and DARPA for partial financial support through the CERA programme (contract no. FA8650-08-C-7838).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York, 10598, USA

    Hugen Yan, Xuesong Li, Bhupesh Chandra, George Tulevski, Yanqing Wu, Marcus Freitag, Wenjuan Zhu, Phaedon Avouris & Fengnian Xia

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  1. Hugen Yan
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  2. Xuesong Li
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  3. Bhupesh Chandra
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  4. George Tulevski
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  5. Yanqing Wu
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  6. Marcus Freitag
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  7. Wenjuan Zhu
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  8. Phaedon Avouris
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  9. Fengnian Xia
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Contributions

F.X., P.A. and H.Y. conceived the experiments. F.X. and H.Y. fabricated the devices. H.Y. performed the measurements and data analysis. X.L. and B.C. grew the chemical vapour deposition graphene. G.T. helped with doping. M.F. helped with the experimental set-ups. Y.W. and W.Z. participated in sample fabrication and characterization. F.X. and H.Y. co-wrote the manuscript. P.A. provided suggestions, and all authors commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Phaedon Avouris or Fengnian Xia.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Yan, H., Li, X., Chandra, B. et al. Tunable infrared plasmonic devices using graphene/insulator stacks. Nature Nanotech 7, 330–334 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2012.59

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