A systematic insight into the surface plasmon polaritons guided by the graphene based heterostructures

Abstract

Graphene paves the way for the outstanding applications as it is one-atom thick and possesses perfect tunability properties. The main goal of this work is to study mode patterns of surface waves propagating in the graphene-based structures in the far-infrared region. Herein, we study a broad variety of graphene structures starting with the simplest graphene/dielectric interface guiding conventional surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) and ending up with more complicated cases allowing to have a deeper insight into the complexity of the mode patterns tunability features provided by graphene paving the way for the hybridized waves. Thus, the hybridized surface-phonon-plasmon-polaritons (SPPPs) guided by graphene/LiF/glass compounds are theoretically studied. By constructing a heterostructure comprising graphene and LiF one may benefit from the advantages of both, resulting in engineerable hybridized SPPPs propagating in both directions, i.e. either forwardly or backwardly. Moreover, we conclude with presentation of the metamaterial composed of graphene and LiF building blocks allowing for an enhanced degree of freedom.