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A comparison of graphene, superconductors and metals as conductors for metamaterials and plasmonics

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Abstract

Recent advancements in metamaterials and plasmonics have promised a number of exciting applications, in particular at terahertz and optical frequencies. Unfortunately, the noble metals used in these photonic structures are not particularly good conductors at high frequencies, resulting in significant dissipative loss. Here, we address the question of what is a good conductor for metamaterials and plasmonics. For resonant metamaterials, we develop a figure-of-merit for conductors that allows for a straightforward classification of conducting materials according to the resulting dissipative loss in the metamaterial. Application of our method predicts that graphene and high-Tc superconductors are not viable alternatives for metals in metamaterials. We also provide an overview of a number of transition metals, alkali metals and transparent conducting oxides. For plasmonic systems, we predict that graphene and high-Tc superconductors cannot outperform gold as a platform for surface plasmon polaritons, because graphene has a smaller propagation length-to-wavelength ratio.

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Figure 1: Dissipated power in a metamaterial with F = 0.37 and τ = 0.039 (quantities calculated for the slab-wire pair of Fig. 2a).
Figure 2: Comparison between the loss factors and kinetic inductance factors of charge-neutral graphene and gold.
Figure 3: Comparison of the plasmonic properties of graphene and gold.
Figure 4: Comparison of the superconductor YBCO at 10 and 50 K (below the critical temperature of 80 K) with silver at room temperature.
Figure 5: Overview of conducting materials classified according to their plasma frequency and collision frequency.

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  • 30 March 2012

    In the version of this Article originally published, ref. 32 was incorrect. This error has been corrected for the HTML and PDF versions of the Article.

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Acknowledgements

Work at Ames Laboratory was partially supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Science, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering (Ames Laboratory is operated for the US Department of Energy by Iowa State University under contract no. DE-AC02-07CH11358) (theoretical studies) and by the US Office of Naval Research (award no. N00014-10-1-0925, study of graphene). Work at FORTH was supported by the European Community's FP7 projects NIMNIL (grant agreement no. 228637, graphene) and ENSEMBLE (grant agreement no. 213669, study of oxides). P.T. acknowledges a fellowship from the Belgian American Educational Foundation.

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P.T., T.K. and C.M.S. conceived the strategy of comparing conducting materials for metamaterials and plasmonics. P.T. assembled input data and P.T and T. K. performed the calculations. All authors were involved in interpretation of the results. P.T. wrote the paper and all authors commented on the manuscript at all stages.

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Correspondence to Philippe Tassin.

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Tassin, P., Koschny, T., Kafesaki, M. et al. A comparison of graphene, superconductors and metals as conductors for metamaterials and plasmonics. Nature Photon 6, 259–264 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2012.27

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