Three-layered nanostructured metamaterials for surface plasmon polariton guiding

Abstract

A novel metamaterial (MM) to guide surface plasmon polariton (SPP) is considered. Specific example of three-layered nanostructured MM and its dispersion engineering are studied in details allowing the development of new devices. Herein we deal with the general original concept of MMs based on inclusions of the additional layers as with a promising class of materials. The metal material stands for as the limiting factor of the frequency range that SPP mode exists. It is worthwhile noting that the SPP mode at high frequency is characterized by extremely large loss. The former restriction causes serious limitations for the potential applications of SPP in the field of optical interconnection, active SPP devices and so on. The surface mode guided by dielectric/graphene/dielectric multilayers MM has been studied based on the theory of electromagnetic field aiming to extend the frequency range of SPP mode. It is demonstrated that surface mode could be supported by the MM. Moreover, the frequency range to where conventional metal SPP cannot exist is extended. Herein, it is concluded that, the MM guided SPP mode can potentially be used to enhance the plasmonic performance over traditional metal one by varying the structure parameters.