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Plasmonic materials and metamaterials allow light to be controlled with nanoscale precision, enabling development of on-chip lasers, modulators, and detectors; novel medical therapeutics; efficient molecular sensors; sub-diffraction-limited optical microscopies; and improved photovoltaic and photocatalytic cells, among other extraordinary applications. However, a key challenge faced by the field is materials. Current plasmonic devices predominately employ noble metals, which exhibit high optical loss and limited tunability. Additionally, they pose challenges in standard semiconductor fabrication and integration, preventing full CMOS compatibility and wide-spread utilization. The goal of this special issue is to highlight novel materials that could replace traditional plasmonic metals. These materials not only address application-specific challenges but also reveal new physics and enable new functional devices that can readily integrated with existing technologies. The 28 papers of this feature issue focus on emerging materials and fabrication technologies for plasmonics, and encompass recent advances in both passive and active components as well as linear and nonlinear plasmonic devices.
© 2015 Optical Society of America
Corrections
17 November 2015: Corrections were made to the abstract, body text, and Refs. 31–41.
Plasmonic materials [1–3] and optical metamaterials [4–6] promise far-reaching scientific and industrial impact. To date, they have enabled remarkable advances in nanometer-scale optical imaging, molecular sensing, catalysis, nano-manufacturing, data storage, quantum information technology, medical therapy and energy conversion. Compared to their photonic counterparts, plasmonic and metamaterial-based devices can be ultra-compact, highly efficient, and multifunctional. However, the specific choice of materials poses a considerable, key challenge to wide-spread utilization of plasmonic technologies. Indeed, most current plasmonic and metamaterial-based components employ noble metals, in particular Au and Ag. These materials generally exhibit high optical loss and are not compatible with standard semiconductor fabrication and integration. Moreover, in their bulk form, they lack tunability, preventing dynamic modulation of their optical properties.
This special issue features 28 papers describing alternate plasmonic materials and advanced fabrication approaches. Foremost are papers describing new tunable, low-loss, and complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS)–compatible materials platforms, including Si [7], Bi [8], Titanium Nitride (TiN) and the transparent conducting oxides Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) and Al-doped ZnO (AZO) [9–12]. The authors of these articles describe both the optical properties of emerging plasmonic materials as well as versatile large-area, low-cost fabrication processes [13]. Titanium Nitride emerges as a particularly promising material for plasmonic devices due to its gold-like optical properties and high thermal stability. For example, this refractory metal is shown to be a stable material for high-temperature thermal emitters and thermophotovoltaic devices [14]. Importantly, the development of novel materials and fabrication approaches leads to exiting physical phenomena, including negative refraction, hyperbolic dispersion, ultrafast topological transitions and epsilon-near-zero behavior, described in [15] and [16].
In the realm of applications, metasurfaces are among the most innovative and technologically-driven advances [17,18]. These ultrathin structures significantly enhance light-matter interactions and promise planar on-chip optics, sensing, imaging, and communications. For example, one article in this issue describes strongly-enhanced second harmonic generation from plasmonic metasurfaces [19]. Other articles highlight opportunities for ultrathin reconfigurable plasmonic devices using metasurfaces based on graphene [20] or the phase-change material VO2 [21]. It is also shown that gap plasmons can efficiently control both the phase and amplitude of light reflected from a metasurface [22]. A particularly exciting article describes new metasurfaces with both space- and time-gradients [23] that could provide unprecedented control over the physical properties of light. To bring this technology closer to market, several articles describe optimized metasurface fabrication, both with conventional plasmonic materials and with TiN constituents [22,24].
Active plasmonics and nonlinear optics represent additional important and technologically-relevant domains, with applications including ultra-fast communication systems, rapid medical diagnostics and improved imaging. This issue includes reports on the nonlinear optical properties of novel refractory plasmonic materials [25] and third harmonic generation in gold nanoparticles [26]. Additionally, this issue includes several feature articles on light emission, including recent advances in spasers – surface plasmon lasers [27–29]; nanocrystal-based emitters [30]. Several magneto-optic and non-reciprocal devices are also discussed, including one feature review paper on nonlinear magneto-plasmonics [31] and another report on a novel graphene-nanowire plasmonic resonator [32]. The proposed devices may inspire a new generation of nonlinear and non-reciprocal nanophotonic devices for on-chip optical communications.
Historically, plasmonics has offered an unprecedented ability to concentrate light into small volumes [33–35], enabling sensitive molecular sensors, improved photovoltaic devices, and unique hot-carrier-based devices. This issue includes breakthrough advances in these areas, with articles describing tip enhanced optical spectroscopy and sensing [36]; a generalized approach to high-throughput biochemical sensing [37]; a novel hydrogen sensing scheme incorporating stacked gold and palladium nanodisks [38]; and new plasmonic materials and methods for thin-film Si solar cells [39]. This issue also highlights the emerging area of hot carrier plasmonic devices, with a comprehensive article outlining many promising alternative materials for hot carrier excitation and extraction, including metal alloys, nanowires, and graphene [40]. Mid-infared plasmonic materials are also described, including use of fluorine-doped tin oxides in the technologically-important wavelength range of 3 to 5 μm [41].
We hope that this feature issue brings a timely overview of the dynamic and multidisciplinary field of plasmonics that will lead to new ideas and innovative research directions. We are thankful to all of the authors and reviewers for their contributions. We also thank Dr. David Hagan for his support of this feature issue, and the OSA staff for their outstanding work throughout the review and production processes.
References and links
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