Abstract
Metals are commonly used in plasmonic devices because of their strong plasmonic property. However, such properties are not easily tuned. For applications such as spatial light modulators and beam steering, tunable plasmonic properties are essential, and neither metals nor other plasmonic materials possess truly tunable plasmonic properties. In this work, we show that the silver alloy silver–ytterbium (Ag-Yb) possesses tunable plasmonic properties; its plasmonic response strength can be adjusted as a function of Yb concentration. Such tunability can be explained in terms of the influence of Yb on bound charge and interaction of its dielectric with the dielectric of Ag. The change in transition characteristics progressively weakens Ag’s plasmonic properties. With a spectral ellipsometric measurement, it was shown that the Ag-Yb alloy thin film retains the properties of Ag with high transmission efficiency. The weakened surface plasmon coupling strength without dramatic change in the coupling wavelengths implies that the tunability of the Ag-Yb alloy is related to its volume ratio. The principle mechanism of the plasmonic change is theoretically explained using a model. This work points to a potential new type of tunable plasmonic material.
Highlights
Plasmonics is a rapidly expanding research area in recent years with promising developments in both theoretical understanding and experimental techniques [1,2,3,4,5,6]
Silver (Ag) and gold (Au) are considered good plasmonic materials, they are intrinsically lossy in the visible and NIR regions; transmissive plasmonic devices are not efficient, and alternate plasmonic material is needed for transmissive plasmonic devices
We study the Ag alloy Ag-Yb, which was found to have a tunable plasmonic properties and transparency, which can be considered useful for a transmissive plasmonic device
Summary
Plasmonics is a rapidly expanding research area in recent years with promising developments in both theoretical understanding and experimental techniques [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Lee et al took advantage of the improved transmission in the optical range of the Ag alloy to fabricate transparent, organic, light-emitting devices [25,26]. We study the Ag alloy Ag-Yb, which was found to have a tunable plasmonic properties and transparency, which can be considered useful for a transmissive plasmonic device. As a demonstration of the alloy plasmonic properties, we utilized the near-field optical lithography technique to fabricate two-dimensional (2-D) disk arrays with a line width of 300 nm and a total area of 2.5 mm by. It was shown that the surface plasmon excitation was diluted in the Ag-Yb alloy device when compared to the control device (pure Ag disk array). This Ag-Yb alloy opens an important avenue for transmissive and tunable plasmonic devices
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