Colloidal Metamaterials at Optical Frequencies
Abstract
To date, almost all reported metamaterials have been fabricated with top- down nanofabrication techniques, which are severely limited in scale and throughput, are inherently limited to planar geometries, and are inherently solid-state materials. Our team has combined theoretical and experimental methods to produce a colloidally-synthesized metamaterial fluid, or metafluid exhibiting strong electric and magnetic resonances at visible frequencies. Our metafluid combines the advantages of solution-based processing with facile integration into conventional optical components. Protein-antibody interactions are used to direct the solution-phase self-assembly of discrete metamolecules comprised of silver nanoparticles tightly packed around a single dielectric core. The electric and magnetic response of individual metamolecules and the bulk metamaterial solution are directly probed with optical scattering and spectroscopy. Effective medium calculations indicate that the bulk metamaterial exhibits a negative effective permeability and a negative refractive index at modest fill factors. This metafluid can be synthesized in large-quantity and high-quality and may accelerate development of advanced nanophotonic and metamaterial devices.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 18, 2014
- Accession Number
- ADA608809
Entities
People
- Jennifer Dionne
Organizations
- Stanford University