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Topological insulators

Plasmons at the surface

Nature Nanotechnology volume 8, pages 541–542 (2013)Cite this article

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Plasmons have been excited on the surface states of the topological insulator Bi2Se3.

In the past two decades, the field of plasmonics has flourished with research activity both fundamental and applied. The general excitement in the field comes from the untapped potential for harnessing the properties of plasmons — quantized electron density oscillations resulting from the interaction of light with metals — that allow, for example, manipulation of light below the diffraction limit. The high oscillation frequency and the high sensitivity to the metallic surface characteristics have made plasmons amenable for applications in cutting-edge technologies such as high-speed data transfer, biosensors and high-resolution microscopes. The plasmonic devices conceived so far, however, seek to exploit oscillation of charges. But electrons possess spin too, and generating and controlling collective spin excitations (spin plasmons) could prove tremendously useful in spintronics. Unfortunately, this is not easy to accomplish, because the spin component of the plasmons is either non-existent or too small in amplitude in today's plasmonic materials. To overcome this limitation, scientists have turned to the recently discovered Dirac materials, and topological insulators in particular1,2,3,4.

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Figure 1: Theoretically proposed spin plasmons excited on the surface of a patterned topological insulator.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Yoshinori Okada is at the WPI-AIMR, Tohoku University, Sendai, 980-8577, Japan,

    Yoshinori Okada

  2. Vidya Madhavan is at the Department of Physics, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467, USA,

    Vidya Madhavan

Authors
  1. Yoshinori Okada
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  2. Vidya Madhavan
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Correspondence to Yoshinori Okada or Vidya Madhavan.

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Okada, Y., Madhavan, V. Plasmons at the surface. Nature Nanotech 8, 541–542 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2013.157

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