OSA's Digital Library

Optics Express

Optics Express

  • Editor: C. Martijn de Sterke
  • Vol. 20, Iss. 6 — Mar. 12, 2012
  • pp: 6068–6079

Optics InfoBase > Optics Express > Volume 20 > Issue 6 > Page 6068

THz bandwidth optical switching with carbon nanotube metamaterial

Andrey E. Nikolaenko, Nikitas Papasimakis, Arkadi Chipouline, Francesco De Angelis, Enzo Di Fabrizio, and Nikolay I. Zheludev  »View Author Affiliations


Optics Express, Vol. 20, Issue 6, pp. 6068-6079 (2012)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/OE.20.006068


View Full Text Article

Enhanced HTML    Acrobat PDF (1638 KB)


Advanced Search

Browse Journals / Lookup Meetings

Browse by Journal and Year


   


Lookup Conference Papers

Close Browse Journals / Lookup Meetings

Article Tools

Share
Citations

Abstract

We provide the first demonstration of exceptional light-with-light optical switching performance of a carbon nanotube metamaterial – a hybrid nanostructure of a plasmonic metamaterial with semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes. A modulation depth of 10% in the near-IR with sub-500 fs response time is achieved with a pump fluence of just 10 μJ/cm2, which is an order of magnitude lower than in previously reported artificial nanostructures. The improved switching characteristics of the carbon nanotube metamaterial are defined by an excitonic nonlinearity of carbon nanotubes resonantly enhanced by a concentration of local fields in the metamaterial. Since the spectral position of the excitonic response and metamaterial plasmonic resonance can be adjusted by using carbon nanotubes of different diameter and scaling of the metamaterial design, the giant nonlinear response of the hybrid metamaterial – in principle – can be engineered to cover the entire second and third telecom windows, from O- to U-band.

© 2012 OSA

OCIS Codes
(160.3918) Materials : Metamaterials
(130.4815) Integrated optics : Optical switching devices

ToC Category:
Metamaterials

History
Original Manuscript: December 2, 2011
Revised Manuscript: January 12, 2012
Manuscript Accepted: January 16, 2012
Published: February 29, 2012

Citation
Andrey E. Nikolaenko, Nikitas Papasimakis, Arkadi Chipouline, Francesco De Angelis, Enzo Di Fabrizio, and Nikolay I. Zheludev, "THz bandwidth optical switching with carbon nanotube metamaterial," Opt. Express 20, 6068-6079 (2012)
http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?URI=oe-20-6-6068


Sort:  Author  |  Year  |  Journal  |  Reset  

References

  1. N. I. Zheludev, “Nonlinear optics on the nanoscale,” Contemp. Phys.43(5), 365–377 (2002). [CrossRef]
  2. V. R. Almeida, C. A. Barrios, R. R. Panepucci, and M. Lipson, “All-optical control of light on a silicon chip,” Nature431(7012), 1081–1084 (2004). [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  3. K. F. MacDonald, Z. L. Samson, M. I. Stockman, and N. I. Zheludev, “Ultrafast active plasmonics,” Nat. Photonics3(1), 55–58 (2009). [CrossRef]
  4. N. I. Zheludev, “Applied physics. The road ahead for metamaterials,” Science328(5978), 582–583 (2010). [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  5. W. J. Padilla, A. J. Taylor, C. Highstrete, M. Lee, and R. D. Averitt, “Dynamical electric and magnetic metamaterial response at terahertz frequencies,” Phys. Rev. Lett.96(10), 107401 (2006). [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  6. D. J. Cho, W. Wu, E. Ponizovskaya, P. Chaturvedi, A. M. Bratkovsky, S.-Y. Wang, X. Zhang, F. Wang, and Y. R. Shen, “Ultrafast modulation of optical metamaterials,” Opt. Express17(20), 17652–17657 (2009). [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  7. K. M. Dani, Z. Ku, P. C. Upadhya, R. P. Prasankumar, A. J. Taylor, and S. R. J. Brueck, “Ultrafast nonlinear optical spectroscopy of a dual-band negative index metamaterial all-optical switching device,” Opt. Express19(5), 3973–3983 (2011). [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  8. J. B. Pendry, A. J. Holden, D. J. Robbins, and W. J. Stewart, “Magnetism from conductors and enhanced nonlinear phenomena,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech.47(11), 2075–2084 (1999). [CrossRef]
  9. M. Ren, B. Jia, J.-Y. Ou, E. Plum, J. Zhang, K. F. MacDonald, A. E. Nikolaenko, J. Xu, M. Gu, and N. I. Zheludev, “Nanostructured plasmonic medium for terahertz bandwidth all-optical switching,” Adv. Mater. (Deerfield Beach Fla.)23(46), 5540–5544 (2011). [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  10. A. E. Nikolaenko, F. De Angelis, S. A. Boden, N. Papasimakis, P. Ashburn, E. Di Fabrizio, and N. I. Zheludev, “Carbon nanotubes in a photonic metamaterial,” Phys. Rev. Lett.104(15), 153902 (2010). [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  11. Y.-C. Chen, N. R. Raravikar, L. S. Schadler, P. M. Ajayan, Y.-P. Zhao, T.-M. Lu, G.-C. Wang, and X.-C. Zhang, “Ultrafast optical switching properties of single-wall carbon nanotube polymer composites at 1.55 μm,” Appl. Phys. Lett.81(6), 975–977 (2002). [CrossRef]
  12. S. Tatsuura, M. Furuki, Y. Sato, I. Iwasa, M. Tian, and H. Mitsu, “Semiconductor carbon nanotubes as ultrafast switching materials for optical telecommunications,” Adv. Mater. (Deerfield Beach Fla.)15(6), 534–537 (2003). [CrossRef]
  13. V. A. Fedotov, M. Rose, S. L. Prosvirnin, N. Papasimakis, and N. I. Zheludev, “Sharp trapped-mode resonances in planar metamaterials with a broken structural symmetry,” Phys. Rev. Lett.99(14), 147401 (2007). [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  14. B. Luk’yanchuk, N. I. Zheludev, S. A. Maier, N. J. Halas, P. Nordlander, H. Giessen, and C. T. Chong, “The Fano resonance in plasmonic nanostructures and metamaterials,” Nat. Mater.9(9), 707–715 (2010). [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  15. L. Huang, H. N. Pedrosa, and T. D. Krauss, “Ultrafast ground-state recovery of single-walled carbon nanotubes,” Phys. Rev. Lett.93(1), 017403 (2004). [CrossRef]
  16. G. N. Ostojic, S. Zaric, J. Kono, M. S. Strano, V. C. Moore, R. H. Hauge, and R. E. Smalley, “Interband recombination dynamics in resonantly excited single-walled carbon nanotubes,” Phys. Rev. Lett.92(11), 117402 (2004). [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  17. W. B. Cho, J. H. Yim, S. Y. Choi, S. Lee, A. Schmidt, G. Steinmeyer, U. Griebner, V. Petrov, D.-I. Yeom, K. Kim, and F. Rotermund, “Boosting the non linear optical response of carbon nanotube saturable absorbers for broadband mode-locking of bulk lasers,” Adv. Funct. Mater.20(12), 1937–1943 (2010). [CrossRef]
  18. T. Hasan, Z. Sun, F. Wang, F. Bonaccorso, P. H. Tan, A. G. Rozhin, and A. C. Ferrari, “Nanotube-polymer composites for ultrafast photonics,” Adv. Mater. (Deerfield Beach Fla.)21(38–39), 3874–3899 (2009). [CrossRef]
  19. R. W. Boyd, Nonlinear Optics, 3rd ed. (Academic Press, Amsterdam, 2008).
  20. K. H. Fong, K. Kikuchi, C. S. Goh, S. Y. Set, R. Grange, M. Haiml, A. Schlatter, and U. Keller, “Solid-state Er:Yb:glass laser mode-locked by using single-wall carbon nanotube thin film,” Opt. Lett.32(1), 38–40 (2007). [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  21. A. Chipouline, S. Sugavanam, V. A. Fedotov, A. E. Nikolaenko, and T. Pertsch, “Analytical model for nonlinear response of carbon nanotubes enhanced by a plasmonic metamaterial,” arXiv:1108.2646v2 (2011), http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.2646 .
  22. M. J. O’Connell, S. M. Bachilo, C. B. Huffman, V. C. Moore, M. S. Strano, E. H. Haroz, K. L. Rialon, P. J. Boul, W. H. Noon, C. Kittrell, J. Ma, R. H. Hauge, R. B. Weisman, and R. E. Smalley, “Band gap fluorescence from individual single-walled carbon nanotubes,” Science297(5581), 593–596 (2002). [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  23. K. Tanaka, E. Plum, J. Y. Ou, T. Uchino, and N. I. Zheludev, “Multifold enhancement of quantum dot luminescence in plasmonic metamaterials,” Phys. Rev. Lett.105(22), 227403 (2010). [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  24. F. Wang, G. Dukovic, L. E. Brus, and T. F. Heinz, “Time-resolved fluorescence of carbon nanotubes and its implication for radiative lifetimes,” Phys. Rev. Lett.92(17), 177401 (2004). [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  25. S. Reich, M. Dworzak, A. Hoffmann, C. Thomsen, and M. S. Strano, “Excited-state carrier lifetime in single-walled carbon nanotubes,” Phys. Rev. B71(3), 033402 (2005). [CrossRef]
  26. P. Avouris, M. Freitag, and V. Perebeinos, “Carbon-nanotube photonics and optoelectronics,” Nat. Photonics2(6), 341–350 (2008). [CrossRef]
  27. A. Maeda, S. Matsumoto, H. Kishida, T. Takenobu, Y. Iwasa, M. Shiraishi, M. Ata, and H. Okamoto, “Large optical nonlinearity of semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes under resonant excitations,” Phys. Rev. Lett.94(4), 047404 (2005). [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  28. M. C. Hersam, “Progress towards monodisperse single-walled carbon nanotubes,” Nat. Nanotechnol.3(7), 387–394 (2008). [CrossRef] [PubMed]
  29. H. Kataura, Y. Kumazawa, Y. Maniwa, I. Umezu, S. Suzuki, Y. Ohtsuka, and Y. Achiba, “Optical properties of single-wall carbon nanotubes,” Synth. Met.103(1-3), 2555–2558 (1999). [CrossRef]

Cited By

 Alert me when this paper is cited

OSA is able to provide readers links to articles that cite this paper by participating in CrossRef's Cited-By Linking service. CrossRef includes content from more than 3000 publishers and societies. In addition to listing OSA journal articles that cite this paper, citing articles from other participating publishers will also be listed.


« Previous Article  |  Next Article »

OSA is a member of CrossRef.

CrossCheck Deposited