Ultraviolet and visible range plasmonics of a topological insulator

Abstract

The development of metamaterials, data processing circuits and sensors for the visible and UV parts of the spectrum is hampered by the lack of low-loss media supporting plasmonic excitations and drives the intense search for plasmonic materials beyond noble metals. By studying plasmonic nanostructures fabricated on the surface of topological insulator $\mbox{Bi}_{1.5}\mbox{Sb}_{0.5}\mbox{Te}_{1.8}\mbox{Se}_{1.2}$ we found that it is orders of magnitude better plasmonic material than gold and silver in the blue-UV range. Metamaterial fabricated from $\mbox{Bi}_{1.5}\mbox{Sb}_{0.5}\mbox{Te}_{1.8}\mbox{Se}_{1.2}$ show plasmonic resonances from 350 nm to 550 nm while surface gratings exhibit cathodoluminescent peaks from 230 nm to 1050 nm. The negative permittivity underpinning plasmonic response is attributed to the combination of bulk interband transitions and surface contribution of the topologically protected states. The importance of our result is in the identification of new mechanisms of negative permittivity in semiconductors where visible-range plasmonics can be directly integrated with electronics.

9 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Graphene plasmonics
• Mid-infrared plasmons in scaled graphene nanostructures
• Collective modes of the massless Dirac plasma
• Optical properties of Bi2Te2Se at ambient and high pressure

Cited by in corpus (30)

• Colloquium: Topological Band Theory
• Losses in plasmonics: from mitigating energy dissipation to embracing loss-enabled functionalities
• Van der Waals thin films of WTe2 for natural hyperbolic plasmonic surfaces
• Collective excitations in twisted bilayer graphene close to the magic angle
• Infrared dielectric metamaterials from high refractive index chalcogenides
• Topological insulators are tunable waveguides for hyperbolic polaritons
• Nano-optomechanical Nonlinear Dielectric Metamaterials
• Surface collective modes in the topological insulators Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$ and Bi${}_{0.5}$Sb${}_{1.5}$Te${}_{3-x}$Se${}_x$
• Propagation of Surface Plasmon Polaritons in Thin Films of Topological Insulators
• Gate-Variable Mid-Infrared Optical Transitions in a $(B{i}_{1-x}S{b}_x{)}_{2}T{e}_3$ Topological Insulator
• Mid-to-far infrared tunable perfect absorption by a sub - λ/100 nanofilm in a fractal phasor resonant cavity
• Surface plasmon polaritons in thin-film Weyl semimetals
• Tunable Intrinsic Plasmons due to Band Inversion in Topological Materials
• Broadband excitation spectrum of bulk crystals and thin layers of PtTe${}_2$
• Polaritonic Quantum Matter
• Spinning Radiation from Topological Insulator
• Metal-insulator transition and tunable Dirac-cone surface state in the topological insulator TlBi1-xSbxTe2 studied by angle-resolved photoemission
• Dielectric and optical markers originating from quantum geometry
• Controlling surface charge and spin density oscillations by Dirac plasmon interaction in thin topological insulators
• Plasmons in topological insulator cylindrical nanowires
• Topological Materials for Near-Field Radiative Heat Transfer
• Photo-induced change of refractive index and transparency in Bi2Te3 films
• Optical vortices in nanophotonics
• High-index and low-loss topological insulators for mid-infrared nanophotonics
• Topological Insulator Metamaterial with Giant Circular Photogalvanic Effect
• Tunable uniform field enhancement in a subwavelength air pillar by photonic doping in epsilon-near-zero medium
• Tunable electron scattering mechanism in plasmonic SrMoO${}_3$ thin films
• An atlas of photonic and plasmonic materials for cathodoluminescence microscopy
• Control of 2D plasmons in the topological insulator Bi2Se3 with highly crystalline C60 overlayers
• Chiral edge plasmons in quantum anomalous Hall insulators