Tamm Plasmon Research Articles

The impact of Tamm plasmons on photonic crystals technology

This review describes hybrid photonic-plasmonic structures based on periodic structures having metallic coatings or inserts, which make use of the Tamm plasmon for sensing applications. The term Tamm plasmon relates to a particular resonance resulting from the enhancement of a surface plasmon resonance absorption via coupling to a wavelength-matching photonic bandgap provided by a photonic crystal. Tamm plasmon-based devices come in an ample variety of material and geometric combinations, each designed to perform a specific kind of measurement. While the physical effect is quite well documented and understood, its implementation in devices is still a rapidly developing and thriving field, which leaves open many possibilities for novel designs and new applications. We therefore aim to give a complete overview on the topic, to provide an ordered collection of designs and uses, as well as to spur further development on the subject of the Tamm plasmon for sensing applications.

Tamm plasmon polaritons induced active terahertz ultra-narrowband absorbing with MoS2

Tamm cavity resonant properties and singular phase behaviors of the one-dimensional photonic crystal stacked system with doped MoS2 have been comprehensively studied. Active multichannel terahertz ultra-narrowband wave absorption originated from the coupling effect of Tamm plasmon polaritons and Fabry-Perot modes. To reveal the critical absorption criterion, absorption amplitude changes in the same coupling mode order are discussed. We specifically discovered that this system has a pair of phase singularities (i.e., points of maximum absorptivity) corresponding to opposite abrupt phase transitions. It means an additional monitoring indicator used for high-sensitive label-free detection of media that outperforms metasurface absorption systems with one singularity is valuable, and no etching is required. More importantly, the phase transition phenomenon can be switched by electric-driven MoS2 via changing conductivity. These results demonstrated the proposed structure is suitable for potential terahertz applications including multifunctional phase-sensitive detectors and high-performance sensors.

Hybrid modes in gold nanoslit arrays on Bragg nanostructures and their application for sensitive biosensors

In this work, we present high-performance surface plasmonic sensors using gold nanostructures and Bragg photonic structures. The gold film on the Bragg structure provides Tamm plasmon states (TPs). The Fano coupling between higher order TPs and Bloch-wave surface plasmon polariton (BW-SPP) on the gold nanoslit array results in a new hybrid Tamm-plasmon mode. Using finite-difference time-domain calculations, we demonstrate that the hybrid mode has the advantages of high surface sensitivity of BW-SPP mode and high resonant quality of Tamm state. The calculated plasmonic field distribution shows that the hybrid mode has a similar evanescent distribution with BW-SPP mode on gold surface and TPs field in the Bragg structure. The experimental results verify that the hybrid mode has one hundred times higher wavelength sensitivity than the Tamm state. The figure of merit of the hybrid mode is five times better than the BW-SPP mode in conventional nanoslit arrays. The real-time sensorgram further confirms that the hybrid mode has a much higher sensitivity and better signal to noise ratios in the biomolecular interaction measurement.

Fiber-Integrated Tamm Plasmon Polariton System

Plasmonic devices have witnessed their success in optical applications due to the boosted light-matter interactions in the subwavelength scale. Among them, optical fiber-based configurations offer excellent portability and accessibility. Here, we report a novel kind of plasmonic fiber devices by introducing Tamm plasmon polaritons (TPPs) into the fiber-optic community. TPPs are cavity modes confined between a distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) and a metallic layer, resulting in high quality factor ∼100, strong field-intensity enhancement of 92, immunity to ambient perturbations, and flexible tunability. As the fabrication process only requires thin-film deposition, fiber-based TPP system is relatively low-cost and high-repeatability. This scenario extends the scope of plasmonic devices and open up new perspectives for active and passive fiber-optic systems.

Design of a Highly Sensitive Self-Reference Tamm-Plasmon-Polariton Sensor Employing Ti3C2Tx MXene

This paper presents design and analysis of a self-reference refractive index sensor for precise detection of different concentrations of H5N1 virus in poultry. The sensor is based on the study of Tamm plasmon polariton (TPP) modes excited between Ti <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sub> C <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> Tx MXene and cavity layer integrated 1D photonic crystal (PhC). We demonstrate the self-reference characteristics of the sensor, which significantly decreases the error contributions by the environmental factors like the light intensity fluctuations and local temperature variations. The transfer matrix method (TMM) is employed to investigate the reflectance and absorbance of the sensor. The cornerstone of this work lies on the assay of the shift in the wavelength and intensity of the TPP mode vis-à-vis different concentrations of the H5N1 virus. Numerous structural parameters like selection of materials, thickness of the MXene layer, thickness of the cavity layer, and period of the PhC are judiciously optimized to envisage maximum sensing performance. The colormap plot of field distribution infers a strong electric field localization in the cavity layer, which indicates high absorption of TPP modes. Compared to the traditional TPP sensor designed with Ag thin film, the electric field intensity (EFI) and sensitivity of the proposed MXene-based TPP sensor have been boosted by 40% and 15.93% respectively. It is appraised that the proposed sensor delivers a maximum sensitivity of 60.9375 nm/HAU, quality factor of 5485.71, and detection limit of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${2.6}\times {{10}}^{-{6}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> RIU. The proposed sensor can find suitable applications in the field of biomedical diagnostics, healthcare, food safety, and environmental monitoring.

Tunable optical bistability in graphene Tamm plasmon/Bragg reflector hybrid structure at terahertz frequencies

Tunable optical bistability (OB) plays an active role in the manipulation of optical switches. Here, by combining graphene with one-dimensional photonic crystal (1D PC) with a defect layer, we theoretically design a simple multilayer structure to manipulate OB. Through the coupling of Tamm plasmon (TP) and defect mode (DM), an induced narrow peak can be generated in the original wide reflection angle, so it presents a richer situation of OB. The theoretical results show that the OB can be adjusted by optimizing the Fermi energy, the number of graphene layers. In addition, the effects of incident angle, the thickness of defect layer, and other structural parameters on OB are also clarified. We believe the above results can provide a new paradigm for the construction of controllable bistable devices.

Giant enhancement of the transverse magneto-optical Kerr effect based on the Tamm plasmon polaritons and its application in sensing

The giant enhancement of the transverse magneto-optical Kerr effect (TMOKE) is investigated. It is achieved by depositing a multilayer structure in the form of alternating magnetic and nonmagnetic dielectric film on a metallic mirror supported by a dielectric substrate. The results show that near perfect TMOKE is realized owing to the Tamm plasmon polaritons (TPPs) excited between the multilayer structure and the metallic mirror, which is confirmed by illustrating the distributions of the magnetic field at resonance. Besides, the potential applications of the giant enhancement of the TMOKE on the sensing are also illustrated in the last. It is believed that the proposed structures in this work are promising for the development of 3D imaging, data storage and novel sensors with high sensitivity.

Nanostructured photosensitive layer for Tamm-plasmon-polariton-based organic solar cells.

The influence of the volume fraction of plasmonic nanoparticles on the efficiency of the Tamm-plasmon-polariton-based organic solar cell is investigated in the framework of temporal coupled mode theory and confirmed by the transfer matrix method. It is shown that, unlike a conventional plasmonic solar cell, in which the efficiency is directly proportional to the volume fraction of nanoparticles in the photosensitive layer, the efficiency of the proposed solar cell reaches the highest value at low volume fractions. This effect is explained by the fact that at these volume fractions, the critical coupling condition of the incident field with the Tamm plasmon polariton is fulfilled. Thus, for the incoming radiation range of 350 to 500 nm, a maximal cell efficiency of 28% is achieved with a volume fraction of nanoparticles equal to 10%. Additionally, the optical properties of the photosensitive layer are compared for the cases of determining its complex refractive index by effective medium theory and the S-parameter retrieval method. A good agreement between the results is demonstrated, which encourages the use of the effective medium theory for preliminary calculations.

Real-Time Visual Sensing of Heat or Mass Transfer Processes for Microfluids via Tamm Plasmon Polaritons.

Heat or mass transfer processes of microfluids are very important in bioscience, environmental engineering, and food science, which are still hard to detect in real time. To overcome this difficulty, we try to use Tamm plasmon polaritons to enhance the interaction of light with microfluids. The main structure of the proposed configuration is Ag-photonic crystal (PhC) cavity, which can generate strong photonic localization by exciting Tamm plasmon polaritons. The results show that the enhancement of light intensity reaches ∼90 times in the cavity and the reflectance spectrum of the proposed structure exists in a narrow valley near 632.8 nm. This illustrates the generation of Tamm plasmon polaritons in the proposed structure. By injecting the microfluids into the cavity, the heat and mass transfer processes of the microfluids will have considerable influence on the reflectance of the proposed structure. Simulation results show that the concentration or temperature distributions of the microfluids can be effectively detected by analyzing the brightness of the imaging pictures, which is real-time and visible. Meanwhile, the sensitivity of the proposed configuration can be tuned by setting proper base parameters. This proposed configuration will have great potential in the study of microfluids, especially for the dynamic processes.

Polarization modal analysis of Tamm plasmon at the metal-DBR interface for temperature sensing

Polarization modal analysis of Tamm plasmon at the metal-DBR interface for temperature sensing

Investigation of bound states in the continuum in dual-band perfect absorbers

Enhancing the light-matter interaction of two-dimensional materials in the visible and near-infrared regions is highly required in optical devices. In this paper, the optical bound states in the continuum (BICs) that can enhance the interaction between light and matter are observed in the grating-graphene-Bragg mirror structure. The system can generate a dual-band perfect absorption spectrum contributed by guided-mode resonance (GMR) and Tamm plasmon polarition (TPP) modes. The optical switch can also be obtained by switching the TE-TM wave. The dual-band absorption response is analyzed by numerical simulation and coupled-mode theory (CMT), with the dates of each approach displaying consistency. Research shows that the GMR mode can be turned into the Fabry-Pérot BICs through the transverse resonance principle (TRP). The band structures and field distributions of the proposed loss system can further explain the BIC mechanism. Both static (grating pitch P) and dynamic parameters (incident angle θ) can be modulated to generate the Fabry-Pérot BICs. Moreover, we explained the reason why the strong coupling between the GMR and TPPs modes does not produce the Friedrich-Wintgen BIC. Taken together, the proposed structure can not only be applied to dual-band perfect absorbers and optical switches but also provides guidance for the realization of Fabry-Pérot BICs in lossy systems.

Design of a Slab Tamm Plasmon Resonator Coupled to a Multistrip Array Waveguide for the Mid Infrared.

In this work, we present and analyze a design of an absorber–waveguide system combining a highly sensitive waveguide array concept with a resonant selective absorber. The waveguide part is composed of an array of coupled strip waveguides and is therefore called a coupled strip array (CSA). The CSA is then coupled to the end of a slab Tamm plasmon (STP-) resonator, which is composed of a quasicrystal-like reflector formed by the patterning of a silicon slab and an interfacing tungsten slab. The concept describes an emitter–waveguide or waveguide–detector system featuring selective plasmon-enhanced resonant absorption or emission. These are crucial properties for corresponding optical on-chip integrated devices in context with evanescent field absorption sensing in fluids or gases, for example. Thus, the concept comprises a valuable and more cost-effective alternative to quantum cascade lasers. We designed the lateral dimensions of the STP resonator via a simple quasi-crystal approach and achieved strong narrowband resonances (emittance and Q-factors up to 85% and 88, respectively) for different silicon thicknesses and substrate materials (air and silicon oxide). Moreover, we analyze and discuss the sensitivity of the complete emitter–waveguide system in dependence on the slab thickness. This reveals the crucial correlation between the expected sensitivity assigned to the absorber–waveguide system and field confinement within the silicon.

The giant enhancement of nonreciprocal radiation in Thue-morse aperiodic structures

Nonreciprocal radiation has potential applications in the fields of aerospace, energy conversion, and communications. In this paper, the strong nonreciprocal radiation effect in Thue-morse aperiodic structure is systematically investigated. It is achieved by placing a Thue-morse aperiodic magnetophotonic crystal atop a metallic mirror backed with a dielectric substrate. The giant enhancement of nonreciprocal radiation is achieved at the wavelength of 16 μm when the applied magnetic field is 3 T and the incident angle is 60°. This giant enhancement of nonreciprocity is attributed to the Tamm plasmon polaritons (TPPs) excited at the interface between the Thue-morse aperiodic magnetophotonic crystal and the metal mirror, and is confirmed by investigating the distribution of the normalized magnetic field amplitude. Besides, the performance of the enhanced nonreciprocal radiation could be expanded to the waveband smaller than 16 μm. The novelty of this work is that a new scheme is proposed to achieve giant enhancement of nonreciprocal radiation with lamellar structure. It is believed such structure can be employed to verify the Kirchhoff’s law with nonreciprocal mediums and will prompt the development of light harvesting devices and thermal emitters.

Theoretical investigation of optical properties and Faraday rotation of one-dimensional periodic structure of magneto-optical material with a defect electro-optical material for the supported Tamm plasmon polaritons

Theoretical investigation of optical properties and Faraday rotation of one-dimensional periodic structure of magneto-optical material with a defect electro-optical material for the supported Tamm plasmon polaritons

Broadband Tamm Plasmons in Chirped Photonic Crystals for Light-Induced Water Splitting.

An electrode of a light-induced cell for water splitting based on a broadband Tamm plasmon polariton localized at the interface between a thin TiN layer and a chirped photonic crystal has been developed. To facilitate the injection of hot electrons from the metal layer by decreasing the Schottky barrier, a thin n-Si film is embedded between the metal layer and multilayer mirror. The chipping of a multilayer mirror provides a large band gap and, as a result, leads to an increase in the integral absorption from 52 to 60 percent in the wavelength range from 700 to 1400 nm. It was shown that the photoresponsivity of the device is 32.1 mA/W, and solar to hydrogen efficiency is 3.95%.

Observation of a High-Energy Tamm Plasmon State in the Near-IR Region.

We report on the experimental observation of a Tamm plasmon state in the near-IR region characterized by an anomalously high energy level located in the upper half of the photonic band gap. Such a “blue” Tamm plasmon was demonstrated at the interface between a conventional, completely periodic Bragg reflector and a nanostructured nonresonant thin gold grating. We study the effect of the grating period on the characteristics of the anomalous state and show that the anomaly results from a nontrivial topology of the nanograting’s optical near field, which cannot be captured by the effective medium approach and transfer matrix method commonly employed in the analysis of Tamm plasmons.

Single‐Material, Near‐Infrared Selective Absorber Based on Refractive Index‐Tunable Tamm Plasmon Structure (Advanced Optical Materials 6/2022)

A compact single-material Tamm plasmon (TP) structure in the near-infrared was theoretically designed and experimentally verified by Young Min Song and co-workers, as shown in article number 2102388. The TP is composed of a single material, where the refractive indices are tailored through porosity tuning to achieve impedance matching. The fabricated TP shows high absorptance (≈99%) and Q-factors (≈45) in the Tamm state. Photodetectors with single-material TPs and metal–semiconductor–metal structures afford excellent detectivity in the near-infrared.

A high-Q mid-infrared Tamm plasmon absorber using MgF2 and Ge aperiodic tandem films designed by the genetic algorithm

A high-Q mid-infrared Tamm plasmon (TP) absorber using MgF2 and Ge aperiodic tandem films is designed by the genetic algorithm and fabricated by electron beam evaporation and magnetron sputtering. Such a design circumvents the need for the distributed Bragg reflector grating, and the thickness of individual MgF2 films is much smaller than a quarter of wavelength in films (λ/4n). The fabricated TP absorber exhibits a high and sharp absorption peak at 2.73 μm with a quality factor (Q) of 144, while the simulated counterpart has the absorption peak at 2.72 μm with a Q of 155. The profiles of an electromagnetic field in the tandem films are also simulated to reveal the mechanism of narrow thermal emission. Such a high-Q TP absorber is very promising in the mid-infrared simulator and detection.

Synchronously controlled optical modes in the transmittance and reflectance spectra of multilayer photonic structure with dual-frequency nematic liquid crystal.

A method for electrically controlled synchronous mode tuning in the transmittance and reflectance spectra of a photonic structure consisting of an asymmetric dielectric Fabry-Pérot microcavity and an ultrathin metallic film has been proposed. The excitation of a broadband Tamm plasmon polariton at a metal/Bragg mirror interface is accompanied by the two phenomena opposing one another. Due to the strong absorption induced by the metal, a sufficient rejection level in the reflection of the off-resonant radiation has been obtained in a wide spectral range, which almost coincides with the photonic band gap, while at the cavity mode frequencies the structure becomes transparent for the reflected radiation. This leads to the appearance of a series of narrow resonance peaks in the reflectance spectra that coincide in frequency with the transmittance peaks. Based on the structural transformations in the dual-frequency nematic liquid crystal used as a photonic structure defect, the tuning of the modes corresponding to the extraordinary waves to both the short- and long-wavelength spectral ranges has been implemented.

Rabi-like splitting and refractive index sensing with hybrid Tamm plasmon-cavity modes

Rabi-like splitting and self-referenced refractive index sensing in hybrid plasmonic-1D photonic crystal structures have been theoretically demonstrated. The coupling between Tamm plasmon and cavity photon modes are tuned by incorporating a low refractive index spacer layer adjacent to the metallic layer to form their hybrid modes. Anticrossing of the modes observed at different values of spacer layer thickness validates the strong coupling between the two modes and causes Rabi-like splitting with different splitting energy. The modes coupling has been supported by coupled mode theory. Rabi-like splitting energy decreases with increasing number of periods (N) and refractive index contrast (η) of two dielectric materials used to make the 1D photonic crystals, and the observed variation is explained by an analytical model. Angular and polarization dependency of the hybrid modes shows that the polarization splitting of the lower hybrid mode is much stronger than that of the upper hybrid mode. On further investigation, it is seen that one of the hybrid modes remains unchanged while other mode undergoes significant change with varying the cavity medium. This nature of the hybrid modes has been utilized for designing self-referenced refractive index sensors for sensing different analytes. For η= 1.333 and N= 10 in a hybrid structure, the sensitivity increases from 51 to 201 nm RIU−1 with increasing cavity thickness from 170 to 892 nm. For the fixed cavity thickness of 892 nm, the sensitivity increases from 201 to 259 nm RIU−1 by increasing η from 1.333 to 1.605. The sensing parameters such as detection accuracy, quality factor, and figure of merit for two different hybrid structures [(η = 1.333, N = 10) and (η = 1.605, N = 6)] have been evaluated and compared. The value of resonant reflectivity of one of the hybrid modes changes considerably with varying analyte medium which can be used for refractive index sensing.