THIS IS A CONTINUATION OF N000141410474 - Dielectric Matamaterials with Low Loss and Tunability
Abstract
The PI will develop new design concepts that will lead to optimized low-loss, tunable metamaterials. They will theoretically and experimentally study new designs based on dielectric resonators. In collaboration with the Naval Research Laboratory and Vanderbilt University, they will explore tunable metamaterials with changing the electric permittivity, by optical and electronic tuning. Objective: The objective of the proposed research is to reduce the losses and increase the operating frequency of metamaterials with broadband capabilities. This is one of the main challenges of the metamaterials field. The PI will develop new design concepts using dielectric materials that will lead to optimized low-loss metamaterials. They will develop a systematic approach that will more fully exploit the frequency dispersive behavior of metamaterials. This can be used to slow light and reshape the pulses at THz and optical wavelengths, with many potential applications. The results of this research will lead to development of novel materials with unique electromagmentic properties for use in low observable superstructures, reduced thermal emission, and ultrahigh resolution optical and acoustic sensing. Approach: The PI will extend the fundamental theory of negative index materials in order to better understand their physics and applications. They will investigate the use of dielectrics rather than metals to reduce dissipative loss for building the electromagnetic resonators. They will incorporate dielectric inclusions sustaining extended modes (guided modes on a slab, surface modes on photonic crystals, surface modes on linear arrays of dielectric rods) into metamaterials. They will first numerically study the properties of the dark mode, and investigate appropriate secondary nanostructures and the interaction mechanism between both. This will confirm that bound states in dielectric structures can be used as constituents of resonant metamaterials and allow for much larger quality factors than all-metallic approaches. ). They will investigate tunability by varying the polarizability of the non-resonant coupling elements, which will then be made out of a tunable material or a photo-conductive structure. Progress: Various phenomena in THz metamaterials made of phonon-polariton materials have been theoretically studied, including hyperbolic dispersion relation, sub-wavelength imaging using backward propagation and backward radiation, total transmission and sub-wavelength guiding exploiting Mie-resonant scattering in permittivity near zero host, and toroidal dipolar response. The systems are two-dimensional periodic systems of micron-scale rods in a host, where both rods and host are made of polaritonic alkali-halide materials. A review of conducting materials including metals, oxides and graphene for nanophotonic applications has been conducted. Resonant metamaterials need conductors with small resistivity, since dissipative loss in resonant metamaterials is proportional to the real part of the resistivity of the conducting medium it contains.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Nov 23, 2016
- Source ID
- N000141612294
Entities
People
- Kostas Soukoulis
Organizations
- Iowa State University
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy