Transparent conductive oxide materials have shown unique optical properties, such as negative refraction, hyperbolic dispersion, and epsilon-near-zero dispersion. In particular, aluminum-doped zinc oxide (Al:ZnO) has shown the most promising results over traditionally used noble metals. Pulsed layer deposition is a popular technique due to its fast and controlled growth rate, as well as the stoichiometric target-to-substrate material transfer. But, since it uses large and inhomogeneous kinetic energy, samples could be prone to macro- and microscopic defects. In this work, we investigate multilayered samples of Al:ZnO/ZnO grown by pulsed laser deposition with the goal of developing a low-loss metamaterial with hyperbolic dispersion. Different fabrication conditions, such as Al:ZnO/ZnO ratio, the thickness of an individual layer, different substrates, and deposition temperatures, were investigated. Results of the ellipsometry analysis, based on fitting spectroscopy data using the Berreman formalism, show that the hyperbolic dispersion transition (Re ε_∥>0, Re ε_⊥< 0) is achieved at λ_c=1868 nm wavelength (Im (ε_⊥)~0.03) for samples with 1:4 Al:ZnO/ZnO deposition ratio. The fitted dielectric functions for samples with various parameters show that a lower deposition temperature leads to a shorter transition wavelength.

Date Published: 28 August 2017
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 10344, Nanophotonic Materials XIV, 103440O (28 August 2017); doi: 10.1117/12.2273086

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10344:
Nanophotonic Materials XIV
Stefano Cabrini; Gilles Lérondel; Adam M. Schwartzberg; Taleb Mokari, Editor(s)