Project Final Report
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PROJECT FINAL REPORT Grant Agreement number: 213390 Project acronym: PHOME Project title: Photonic Metamaterials Funding Scheme: ICT-FET Period covered: from June 1, 2008 to August 31, 2011 Name of the scientific representative of the project's co-ordinator1, Title and Organisation: Costas M. Soukoulis, Professor, Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH), Heraklion, Crete, Greece Tel: +30 2810 391303 & +30 2810 391547 Fax: +30 2810 391569 E-mail: [email protected] Project website address: http://esperia.iesl.forth.gr/~ppm/PHOME/ 1 Usually the contact person of the coordinator as specified in Art. 8.1. of the Grant Agreement. 4.1 Final publishable summary report (no more than 40 pages) Executive summary (up to 1 page) The field of electromagnetic metamaterials is driven by fascinating and far-reaching theoretical visions such as, e.g., perfect lenses, invisibility cloaking, and enhanced nonlinearities. This emerging field has seen spectacular experimental progress in recent years. Yet, two major challenges remained: (i) realizing truly low- loss metamaterial structures. (ii) Realizing true 3D metamaterial structures that will give negative refractive index, n, in different directions. The PHOME project addressed those challenges and created many unique optical metamaterial structures, both planar and 3D, both chiral and non-chiral, bringing optical metamaterials one-step closer to their use in practical applications. Moreover it explored novel properties and possibilities of metamaterials, such as enhanced nonlinearities, repulsive Casimir force, switching possibilities, giant optical activity etc. Regarding the problem of losses, PHOME addressed many possible ways to minimize and overcome losses: These include shape optimization of the structures, evaluation of the performance of different metals, investigation and application of Electromagnetically Induced Transparency (EIT) ideas, as well as incorporation of active (gain) media into the metamaterial to compensate for the losses. For the study of metamaterials incorporating gain materials we developed a Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) scheme, incorporating a set of auxiliary equations (for the description of the gain medium) into the source-free Maxwell equations (describing the field propagation). Using FDTD simulations we studied the compensation of losses in 2D and 3D metamaterials in a self-consistent way. Particular cases treated were a split ring resonator (SRR) array with a gain layer underneath and 3D realistic fishnet structures. Results showed that the magnetic resonances of the 2D split-ring resonators (SRRs) and the fishnet structures can be substantially undamped by the gain material. Hence, the losses of the magnetic susceptibility, μ, are compensated. It was demonstrated also that the gain medium in a metamaterial can give an effective gain much larger than its bulk counterpart, due to the strong local-field enhancement inside the metamaterial designs. Regarding the difficulties in the fabrication of full 3D metamaterials structures, rather than planar metamaterials, the solution that we pursued was the further development of the direct laser writing (DLW) approach (using the concept of stimulated-emission-depletion (STED) known from fluorescence microscopy) and the development of advanced metallization procedures (chemical vapor deposition and electroplating) for the metallization of the DLW-produced structures. Using this approach we fabricated many 3D optical metamaterials, chiral and non-chiral, and we realized and investigated metamaterials that can be used for 3D clocking, employing the carpet-cloaking approach. Moreover we developed helical chiral metamaterials that offer extremely broadband polarization control and have the potential to be used as compact broadband circular polarisers. Besides the DLW approach we also developed further the e-beam lithography approach and we fabricated various planar structures, mainly chiral, demonstrating strong optical activity and giant circular dichroism. Exploring further the novel properties and possibilities of metamaterials, we adapted and applied the transformation optics approach to nanoscale metallic systems (obtaining various system configurations that resulted to giant field enhancement), we examined the Casimir force between chiral metamaterials (finding possibility for repulsive Casimir force), we demonstrated switchable THz metamaterials employing photo conducting materials, we demonstrated enhanced non-linear properties in metamaterials, like enhanced second harmonic generation, etc. All these advancements obtained thought PHOME project were widely disseminated, as the project gave 138 publications in refereed journals, more than 200 talks in scientific meetings/conferences, organization of more than 15 conferences on photonic metamaterials or sessions at international conferences, four schools for students, and many appearances in public media (newspapers, radio etc). All the activities of PHOME are mentioned in detail in the project web page, at http://esperia.iesl.forth.gr/~ppm/PHOME A summary description of project context and objectives (not exceeding 4 pages). Complete control of an electromagnetic (EM) light wave requires both the ability to directly manipulate its electric and its magnetic vector component. For decades if not centuries, however, this level of control has not been possible because natural materials have essentially zero magnetic response at frequencies beyond the microwave regime. Thus, at least one half of optics & photonics has been missing, obviously limiting the opportunities regarding fundamental optical sciences as well as photonic components and devices. This opportunity seems to be available now by using metamaterials. Metamaterials are tailored man-made materials composed of sub-wavelength metallic building blocks of proper shapes (“photonic atoms”) that are densely packed into an effective material. In this fashion, optical properties become possible that simply do not occur in natural substances, and these properties depend mainly on the geometry and shape of the photonic atoms, and can be engineered at the stage of fabrication. A particularly important example of such a photonic atom is the split-ring resonator (SRR), essentially a tiny electromagnet, which allows for artificial magnetism at elevated frequencies, enabling the formerly missing control of the magnetic component of the light wave. The negative magnetic response (i.e., µ<0) above the SRR eigenfrequency combined with a more usual negative electric response from metal wires (i.e., <0) can lead to a negative index of refraction. Following the original theoretical proposal by Pendry et al. in 1999, negative refractive index metamaterials (NIM) have been realized at microwave frequencies in 2000 and have entered the optical regime (few micrometers wavelength to the visible) in 2004. In 2007, negative-index metamaterials finally reached the red end of the visible spectrum by using variations of the SRR scheme. In the following, we shall refer to metamaterials that operate at optical frequencies as “photonic metamaterials (PMM)”. The fabrication of their sub-wavelength building blocks requires advanced nanofabrication approaches and poses severe challenges regarding quantitative calculations with predictive power. Although the first negative index optical PMMs were already available when the project started, many serious obstacles had to be overcome before the impressive possibilities of such metamaterials could become real applications. Probably the most serious among them is the question of losses, which needed to be reduced significantly (e.g., by introducing gain media). Furthermore, truly three-dimensional (3D), ideally isotropic PMM rather than just planar monolayer of photonic atoms needed to be addressed. One of the main challenges concerns the fabrication of the 3D nm-scale components required. Addressing the issues of losses and nanofabrication of 3D structures, then a practical material with negative index of refraction at optical frequencies and the associated fascinating long-term dream of the “perfect lens” allowing for sub-wavelength imaging would be within reach. In addition to this ambitious goal, other directions, possibly with more near- term impact on real-world applications were: (a) development of chiral PMM with ultimate target the development of thin-film optical isolators without the need for a static magnetic field, (b) study and exploitation of optical non-linearities (e.g., second-harmonic generation) and optical switching in PMMs, taking advantage of resonances and large local-field enhancements in such media, and targeting applications such as tuneable filtering, electro-optic modulation etc. It should be clear that addressing these challenges required a creative design process, in which experts from theoretical and experimental physics as well as electrical engineers collaborate closely. Some of the objectives we had set forth were inherently risky because they transcend the state-of-the-art by a large margin. However, this risk was mitigated by the fact that we had assembled a team with some of the best experts in this field. In what follows we describe the objectives of the proposal, as well the proposed ways/approaches to achieve these objectives. Main objectives of the proposed effort: (a) Design and realization of 3d photonic metamaterials. (b) Design and fabrication of chiral photonic metamaterials. (c) Realization of active optical materials