Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
10669663 | Thin Solid Films | 2014 | 6 Pages |
Abstract
Metamaterials in the form of chiral nanostructures have shown great potential for applications such as chemical and biochemical sensors and broadband or wavelength tunable circular polarizers. Here we demonstrate a method to produce tailored transparent chiral nanostructures with the wide-bandgap semiconductor AlxIn1 â xN. A series of anisotropic and transparent films of AlxIn1 â xN were produced using curved-lattice epitaxial growth on metallic buffer layers. By controlling the sample orientation during dual magnetron sputter deposition, nanospirals with right-handed or left-handed chirality were produced. Using a dual rotating compensator ellipsometer in reflection mode, the full Mueller matrix was measured in the spectral range 245-1700 nm at multiple angles of incidence. The samples were rotated one full turn around their normal during measurements to provide a complete description of the polarization properties in all directions. For certain wavelengths, unpolarized light reflected off these films becomes highly polarized with a polarization state close to circular. Nanostructured films with right- and left-handed chirality produce reflections with right- and left-handed near-circularly polarized light, respectively. A model with a biaxial layer in which the optical axes are rotated from bottom to top was fitted to the Mueller-matrix data. Hence we can perform non-destructive structural analysis of the complex thin layers and confirm the tailored structure. In addition, the refractive index, modeled with a biaxial Cauchy dispersion model, is obtained for the AlxIn1 â xN films.
Keywords
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Materials Science
Nanotechnology
Authors
Roger Magnusson, Jens Birch, Per Sandström, Ching-Lien Hsiao, Hans Arwin, Kenneth Järrendahl,