Towards infrared plasmonics in graphene

Graphene plasmons have recently been proposed as an alternative to noble-metal plasmons in the field of photonics, due to its extremely tight light confinement, relatively long-lived collective oscillation, and high tunability via electrostatic gating. Successful support and tuning of graphene plasmonic modes rely on controllable doping of graphene to high carrier densities in nanometer-scale structures. In this thesis, an experimental approach to generating nanoscale spatial carrier density modulation of graphene using electrolyte gates and crosslinked-PMMA screen is proposed and investigated. The increased optical absorption in the infrared region due to plasmon resonances induced by the proposed scheme is numerically studied. We then present the fabrication technique of the proposed scheme for various nanostructure geometries. Finally, we provide an outlook of future studies of graphene plasmonics, including plasmon excitation with solid-state cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED).

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Peng, Cheng, S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Dirk R. Englund.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/101585

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/101585