Abstract
All-dielectric nanophotonics is an exciting and rapidly developing area of nano-optics that utilizes the resonant behavior of high-index low-loss dielectric nanoparticles to enhance light–matter interaction at the nanoscale. When experimental implementation of a specific all-dielectric nanostructure is desired, two crucial factors have to be considered: the choice of a high-index material and a fabrication method. The degree to which various effects can be enhanced relies on the dielectric response of the chosen material as well as the fabrication accuracy. Here, we provide an overview of available high-index materials and existing fabrication techniques for the realization of all-dielectric nanostructures. We compare performance of the chosen materials in the visible and IR spectral ranges in terms of scattering efficiencies and Q factors of the magnetic Mie resonance. Methods for all-dielectric nanostructure fabrication are discussed and their advantages and disadvantages are highlighted. We also present an outlook for the search for better materials with higher refractive indices and novel fabrication methods that will enable low-cost manufacturing of optically resonant high-index nanoparticles. We believe that this information will be valuable across the field of nanophotonics and particularly for the design of resonant all-dielectric nanostructures.
Highlights
Plasmonics, the study of extraordinary optical properties of metallic nanoparticles, has been the avant-garde of nanophotonics for more than a decade
The intense research in this field has arisen due to the ability of nanoparticles made of noble metals to enhance the electromagnetic field on the nanoscale, enabling unprecedented opportunities for boosting various optical effects and manipulation of electromagnetic radiation in unusual ways [1,2,3,4,5,6]
The Mie theory predicting the resonant behavior of high-index subwavelength particles has existed for more than a century [19], the enormous interest in optical properties of all-dielectric nanostructures has arisen only recently with observation of low-order Mie modes in silicon colloids [20,21] and thanks to the advances in fabrication of single dielectric nanoparticles with a controlled geometry [22,23,24,25,26]
Summary
Plasmonics, the study of extraordinary optical properties of metallic nanoparticles, has been the avant-garde of nanophotonics for more than a decade. Resonant behavior of high-index nanoparticles enables realization of low-loss nonplasmonic metamaterials and metasurfaces [27,28,29,30] with rich optical functionalities [31,32,33,34,35,36], and paves the way to enhanced light–matter interaction [37,38,39,40] as well as advanced linear [41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49] and nonlinear [50,51,52,53] light manipulation. The resonant behavior is analyzed in terms of linear characteristics of spherical nanoparticles To complement this analysis, we review the existing fabrication methods of nanostructures from various high-index materials. We provide motivations for the search for better materials with higher refractive indices and novel fabrication methods, enabling low-cost manufacturing of optically resonant dielectric nanoparticles
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