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Graphene-based active slow surface plasmon polaritons

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posted on 2024-07-11, 15:38 authored by Hua Lu, Chao Zeng, Qiming Zhang, Xueming Liu, Md Muntasir Hossain, Philipp Reineck, Min Gu
Finding new ways to control and slow down the group velocity of light in media remains a major challenge in the field of optics. For the design of plasmonic slow light structures, graphene represents an attractive alternative to metals due to its strong field confinement, comparably low ohmic loss and versatile tunability. Here we propose a novel nanostructure consisting of a monolayer graphene on a silicon based graded grating structure. An external gate voltage is applied to graphene and silicon, which are separated by a spacer layer of silica. Theoretical and numerical results demonstrate that the structure exhibits an ultra-high slowdown factor above 450 for the propagation of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) excited in graphene, which also enables the spatially resolved trapping of light. Slowdown and trapping occur in the mid-infrared wavelength region within a bandwidth of ~2.1 μm and on a length scale less than 1/6 of the operating wavelength. The slowdown factor can be precisely tuned simply by adjusting the external gate voltage, offering a dynamic pathway for the release of trapped SPPs at room temperature. The presented results will enable the development of highly tunable optoelectronic devices such as plasmonic switches and buffers.

Funding

CE110001018:ARC

Investigation into a graphene ultra-flat lens array for silicon solar cells breaking the Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit

Australian Research Council

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History

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PDF (Published version)

ISSN

2045-2322

Journal title

Scientific Reports

Volume

5

Issue

2015)

Article number

article no. 8443

Publisher

Nature Publishing Group

Copyright statement

Copyright © 2015. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder in order to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Language

eng

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