Dielectric Metamaterials

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Optics and Lasers".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2018) | Viewed by 16183

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Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI 49931, USA
Interests: dielectric metamaterials and photonic crystals; electromagnetic cloaking; computational electromagnetic analysis; computer-aided design and development of microwave and photonic devices; materials and device characterization at microwaves; high-contrast materials integration
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Rapid progress in the field of photonics causes increased interest in dielectric metamaterials, which, unlike conventional metamaterials, composed of metallic cut wires and split-ring resonators, could be made practically lossless at frequencies up to those of optics. The first designs of dielectric metamaterials were based on the same approaches as those used for conventional metamaterials, i.e., employing complementary resonators providing magnetic- and electric-type resonances in respective elements. Later, dielectric metamaterials composed of identical resonators started to attract more attention due to the availability of technological methods for their fabrication, including nanotechnology. The interest in such dielectric metamaterials has notably increased after observation of negative refraction in these arrays, which was often considered to be related to the overlapping of electric and magnetic Mie resonances and, respectively, to double negativity of the effective medium parameters. However, metamaterials composed of identical dielectric resonators are also expected to have common features with photonic crystals, even if their resonators are small compared to their wavelengths. While the interest to these low-loss media, providing for negative refraction, is growing, and the areas of their application are increasing, questions about the nature of their electromagnetic responses remain. What are the roles of periodicity and resonances in particles and how does their interplay affect the properties of the structures? Can refraction in dielectric metametarials be controlled by their dispersive properties instead of Mie resonances?

The aim of this Special Issue is to attract leading researchers to the discussion of the complexity of underlying physics in dielectric metamaterials and to clarify the nature of their electromagnetic responses, to report the latest achievements in their fabrication and design, and to highlight their exciting properties and new applications.

Prof. Elena Semouchkina
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • Dielectric metamaterials
  • Photonic crystals
  • Mie resonances
  • Lorentz’s dispersion
  • Homogenization theory
  • Effective parameters
  • Coupling between resonators
  • Dispersion diagrams
  • Extraction of index values  
  • Negative refraction

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

8 pages, 2530 KiB  
Article
Electromagnetically Induced Transparency in All-Dielectric U-Shaped Silicon Metamaterials
by Mengyao Qin, Chengda Pan, Yu Chen, Qiang Ma, Shikang Liu, E Wu and Botao Wu
Appl. Sci. 2018, 8(10), 1799; https://doi.org/10.3390/app8101799 - 01 Oct 2018
Cited by 37 | Viewed by 3925
Abstract
An analogy of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) based on all-dielectric metamaterial is theoretically demonstrated in this paper. The U-shaped Silicon-based metamaterial unit cell comprises a dipole antenna supported by one horizontal nanoscale bar and a quadrupolar antenna supported by two vertical nanoscale bars. [...] Read more.
An analogy of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) based on all-dielectric metamaterial is theoretically demonstrated in this paper. The U-shaped Silicon-based metamaterial unit cell comprises a dipole antenna supported by one horizontal nanoscale bar and a quadrupolar antenna supported by two vertical nanoscale bars. The near-field coupling between the two antennas and the reduction of absorption loss lead to a narrow EIT-like transmission window with a high quality-factor of 130, which exhibits a refractive index sensitivity with a figure-of-merit of 29. The group delay of 0.75 ps and the group index of 2035 are obtained in the transmission window. Due to these unique optical properties, the proposed metamaterial structure can find many applications including slow-light devices, optical sensors, enhancement of non-linear processes, and storage of quantum information. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dielectric Metamaterials)
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12 pages, 3443 KiB  
Article
Dependence of Dispersion on Metamaterial Structural Parameters and Dispersion Management
by Zheng Guo Xu, Yan Ling Xue and Zhihao Huang
Appl. Sci. 2018, 8(7), 1057; https://doi.org/10.3390/app8071057 - 28 Jun 2018
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2408
Abstract
This paper compares the dispersion in metamaterials (MMs) and some Thorlabs’ conventional glass, and finds that MMs may exhibit much more substantial dispersion (e.g., three orders of magnitude larger dispersion). With such large dispersion, a transmission more than 22 km is impossible because [...] Read more.
This paper compares the dispersion in metamaterials (MMs) and some Thorlabs’ conventional glass, and finds that MMs may exhibit much more substantial dispersion (e.g., three orders of magnitude larger dispersion). With such large dispersion, a transmission more than 22 km is impossible because of pulse splitting resulting from the third-order dispersion. However, MMs are artificial materials with their electric and magnetic plasma frequencies tunable depending upon their structures. We take advantage of such tunability to tailor the dispersive response of MMs and investigate the dependence of dispersion on the MM structural parameters. We make dispersion management by (1) searching for the existence of some ‘good’ dispersion points and numerically demonstrating 90 km long transmission with almost no pulse width expansion and any impact from a higher order dispersion in the MM we designed; and (2) searching for the possibility for group-velocity dispersion (GVD) compensation and demonstrating 120 km transmission by configuring the dispersion-engineered MM. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dielectric Metamaterials)
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8 pages, 4488 KiB  
Article
High Q-Factor Resonance in a Symmetric Array of All-Dielectric Bars
by Chuanshuai Sui, Xiangjun Li, Tingting Lang, Xufeng Jing, Jianjun Liu and Zhi Hong
Appl. Sci. 2018, 8(2), 161; https://doi.org/10.3390/app8020161 - 24 Jan 2018
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 5758
Abstract
Strong electrical dipole resonance (ER) with high quality-factor (Q) (over several thousands) in a simple silicon all-dielectric rod arrays without asymmetric structure is achieved in the near infrared (NIR) wavelength range. According to numerical simulations, strong high order ER is excited by vertical [...] Read more.
Strong electrical dipole resonance (ER) with high quality-factor (Q) (over several thousands) in a simple silicon all-dielectric rod arrays without asymmetric structure is achieved in the near infrared (NIR) wavelength range. According to numerical simulations, strong high order ER is excited by vertical incident plane waves with electric fields polarized perpendicular to the rod instead of parallel. The electric field coupling between adjacent rods is greatly enhanced by increasing the length of the rods, and the radiative loss of the ER is significantly depressed, thus achieving high Q resonances. In the meantime, the electric field enhancement both inside and surrounding the rod are greatly improved, which is conducive to many applications. The proposed all-dielectric metasurface is simple, low loss, Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) compatible, and can be applied in many fields, such as sensing, narrowband filters, optical modulations, and nonlinear interactions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dielectric Metamaterials)
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1882 KiB  
Article
Wavelength Conversion Enhancement Achieved by Using Resonance in an Array of Nanocylinders
by Kihwan Moon, Young Jin Lee, Seokhyeon Hong and Soon-Hong Kwon
Appl. Sci. 2017, 7(12), 1246; https://doi.org/10.3390/app7121246 - 01 Dec 2017
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3685
Abstract
Upconversion (UC) materials are promising for harvesting visual light. However, the efficiency of UC processes is very low when applied to practical devices. Therefore, we propose an array of UC nanocylinders on a gold substrate and induce electric dipole (ED) and magnetic dipole [...] Read more.
Upconversion (UC) materials are promising for harvesting visual light. However, the efficiency of UC processes is very low when applied to practical devices. Therefore, we propose an array of UC nanocylinders on a gold substrate and induce electric dipole (ED) and magnetic dipole (MD) resonances to increase the UC process efficiency by increasing light-matter interactions via the nanostructures. The nanocylinders not only increase the absorption of infrared light with a wavelength of 980 nm but also enhance the emission of visible light with a wavelength of 660 nm through surface plasmons and electric dipole resonances. The absorbance of the UC material can be enhanced by coupling with the surface plasmons and coupling with the MDs of each nanocylinder. On the other hand, the emission of visible light can be largely enhanced by increasing the spontaneous emission rate of the Purcell effect in electric dipole resonances and tailoring the output efficiency of the emitted light. In summary, we obtained an absorption enhancement of ×7.3, an average effective upward emission enhancement of ×21, and an improved total UC process of the proposed nanocylinder of ×155. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dielectric Metamaterials)
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