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Nanofabricated media with negative permeability at visible frequencies

Nature volume 438, pages 335–338 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

A great deal of attention has recently been focused on a new class of smart materials—so-called left-handed media—that exhibit highly unusual electromagnetic properties and promise new device applications1,2,3,4,5,6. Left-handed materials require negative permeability µ, an extreme condition that has so far been achieved only for frequencies in the microwave to terahertz range7,8,9,10,11. Extension of the approach described in ref. 7 to achieve the necessary high-frequency magnetic response in visible optics presents a formidable challenge12,13,14,15, as no material—natural or artificial—is known to exhibit any magnetism at these frequencies. Here we report a nanofabricated medium consisting of electromagnetically coupled pairs of gold dots with geometry carefully designed at a 10-nm level. The medium exhibits a strong magnetic response at visible-light frequencies, including a band with negative µ. The magnetism arises owing to the excitation of an antisymmetric plasmon resonance. The high-frequency permeability qualitatively reveals itself via optical impedance matching. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of engineering magnetism at visible frequencies and pave the way towards magnetic and left-handed components for visible optics.

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Figure 1: Nanofabricated medium with magnetic response at optical frequencies.
Figure 2: Experimental reflection spectra for our nanostructured media.
Figure 3: Numerical simulations of optical response for interacting Au pillars.
Figure 4: Example of fitting the experimental reflection spectra with theory.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by EPSRC (UK). We thank L. Panina and D. Makhnovskiy for discussions, and N. Roberts for collaboration in experiments. A.A.F. acknowledges support from INTAS.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, M13 9PL, Manchester, UK

    A. N. Grigorenko, A. K. Geim, H. F. Gleeson, Y. Zhang & A. A. Firsov

  2. Institute of Microelectronics Technology, 142432, Chernogolovka, Russia

    A. A. Firsov

  3. Department of Electronic Engineering, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham, B4 7ET, UK

    I. Y. Khrushchev & J. Petrovic

Authors
  1. A. N. Grigorenko
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  2. A. K. Geim
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  3. H. F. Gleeson
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  5. A. A. Firsov
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Correspondence to A. N. Grigorenko.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Notes

This file contains a description of visible-light impedance matching observed in our experiments and a procedure of modelling of reflection spectra using Fresnel coefficients. Supplementary Figure 1 demonstrates the effect of impedance matching. Supplementary Figure 2 shows an agreement between the measured reflection spectra and the spectra calculated with the help of Fresnel coefficients. (PDF 331 kb)

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Grigorenko, A., Geim, A., Gleeson, H. et al. Nanofabricated media with negative permeability at visible frequencies. Nature 438, 335–338 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04242

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