Letter abstract
Nature Materials 6, 946 - 950 (2007)
Published online: 14 October 2007 | doi:10.1038/nmat2033
Subject Category: Optical, photonic and optoelectronic materials
Negative refraction in semiconductor metamaterials
Anthony J. Hoffman1, Leonid Alekseyev1, Scott S. Howard1, Kale J. Franz1, Dan Wasserman1, Viktor A. Podolskiy2, Evgenii E. Narimanov1, Deborah L. Sivco3 & Claire Gmachl1
An optical metamaterial is a composite in which subwavelength features, rather than the constituent materials, control the macroscopic electromagnetic properties of the material. Recently, properly designed metamaterials have garnered much interest because of their unusual interaction with electromagnetic waves1, 2, 3. Whereas nature seems to have limits on the type of materials that exist, newly invented metamaterials are not bound by such constraints. These newly accessible electromagnetic properties make these materials an excellent platform for demonstrating unusual optical phenomena and unique applications such as subwavelength imaging and planar lens design. 'Negative-index materials', as first proposed, required the permittivity, 
, and permeability, 
, to be simultaneously less than zero, but such materials face limitations. Here, we demonstrate a comparatively low-loss, three-dimensional, all-semiconductor metamaterial that exhibits negative refraction for all incidence angles in the long-wave infrared region and requires only an anisotropic dielectric function with a single resonance. Using reflection and transmission measurements and a comprehensive model of the material, we demonstrate that our material exhibits negative refraction. This is furthermore confirmed through a straightforward beam optics experiment. This work will influence future metamaterial designs and their incorporation into optical semiconductor devices.
- Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA
- Physics Department, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331, USA
- Alcatel-Lucent, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974, USA
Correspondence to: Anthony J. Hoffman1 e-mail: ajhoffma@princeton.edu
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