Band structure engineered layered metals for low-loss plasmonics.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 28436432.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms15133 and PMC identifier 5413982.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Plasmonics currently faces the problem of seemingly inevitable optical losses occurring in the metallic components that challenges the implementation of essentially any application. In this work, we show that Ohmic losses are reduced in certain layered metals, such as the transition metal dichalcogenide TaS<sub>2</sub>, due to an extraordinarily small density of states for scattering in the near-IR originating from their special electronic band structure. On the basis of this observation, we propose a new class of band structure engineered van der Waals layered metals composed of hexagonal transition metal chalcogenide-halide layers with greatly suppressed intrinsic losses. Using first-principles calculations, we show that the suppression of optical losses lead to improved performance for thin-film waveguiding and transformation optics.