Broad Spectral Tuning of Ultra-Low Loss Polaritons in a van der Waals Crystal by Intercalation

Abstract

Phonon polaritons (PhPs) -- light coupled to lattice vibrations -- in polar van der Waals (vdW) crystals are promising candidates for controlling the flow of energy at the nanoscale due to their strong field confinement, anisotropic propagation, and ultra-long lifetime in the picosecond range \cite{ref1,ref2,ref3,ref4,ref5}. However, the lack of tunability in their narrow and material-specific spectral range -- the Reststrahlen Band (RB) -- severely limits their technological implementation. Here, we demonstrate that the intercalation of Na atoms in the vdW semiconductor $\alpha$-V${}_2$O${}_5$ enables a broad spectral shift of RBs, and that the PhPs excited exhibit ultra-low losses (lifetime of $4\pm 1$~ps), similar to PhPs in the non-intercalated crystal (lifetime of $6\pm 1$ ps). We expect our intercalation method to be applicable to other vdW crystals, opening the door for the use of PhPs in broad spectral bands in the mid-infrared domain.

15 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Highly confined low-loss plasmons in graphene-boron nitride heterostructures
• Infrared permittivity of the biaxial van der Waals semiconductor $\alpha$-MoO${}_3$ from near- and far-field correlative studies

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