Alexander V. Kildishev

Ultra-compact metallic interface for NV spin readout (Conference Presentation)

The spin-optical properties of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond have been demonstrated to enable a plethora of applications ranging from nanoscale sensing to quantum information technologies. The conventional design of NV-based devices requires separate infrastructures for delivering microwave (MW) excitation and guiding/collecting fluorescence signals. Typically, one fabricates dielectric waveguides or lenses next to metallic MW antennae. Here we showed that the device compactness can be substantially improved by the integration of NV centers with channel plasmonic waveguides milled in an optically thick metal layer that simultaneously acts as a MW antenna. The use of highly conductive plasmonic materials allows to fabricate monolithic ultra-compact structures supporting propagation of both MW and optical signals. We demonstrated optical readout of spin resonance by collecting channel plasmon polaritons scattered from the waveguide end.

Temperature evolution of optical properties in plasmonic metals (Conference Presentation)

Understanding the temperature evolution of optical properties in thin metals is critical for rational design of practical metal based nanophotonic components operating at high temperatures in a variety of research areas, including plasmonics and near-field radiative heat transfer. In this talk, we will present our recent experimental findings on the temperature induced deviations in the optical responses of single- and poly-crystalline metal films – gold, silver and titanium nitride thin films - at elevated temperatures upto 900 0C, in the wavelength range from 370 to 2000 nm. Our findings show that while the real part of the dielectric function changes marginally with temperature, the imaginary part varies drastically. Furthermore, the temperature dependencies were found to be strongly dependent on the film thickness and microstructure/crystallinity. We attribute the observed changes in the optical properties to predominantly three physical processes: 1) increasing electron-phonon interactions, 2) reducing free electron densities and, 3) changes in the electron effective mass. Using extensive numerical simulations we demonstrate the importance of incorporating the temperature induced deviations into numerical models for accurate multiphysics modeling of practical high temperature plasmonic components. We also provide experiment-fitted models to describe the temperature-dependent metal dielectric functions as a sum of Drude and critical point/Lorentz oscillators. These causal analytical models could enable accurate multiphysics modeling of nanophotonic and plasmonic components operating at high temperatures in both frequency and time domains.

Surface-plasmon optomagnetic field enhancement for all-optical magnetization switching (Conference Presentation)

The demand for faster magnetization switching speeds and lower energy consumption has driven the field of spintronics in recent years. Whereas spin-transfer-torque and spin-orbit-torque interactions exemplify the potential of electron-spin-based devices and memory, the switching speed is limited to the ns regime by the precessional motion of the magnetization. All-optical magnetization switching, based on the inverse Faraday effect, has been shown to be an attractive method for achieving magnetization switching at ps speeds. Successful magnetization reversal in thin films has been demonstrated by using circularly polarized light. However, a method for all-optical switching of on-chip nanomagnets in high density memory modules has not been described. In this work we propose to use plasmonics, with CMOS compatible plasmonic materials, to achieve on-chip magnetization reversal in nanomagnets. Plasmonics allows light to be confined in dimensions much smaller than the diffraction limit of light. This in turn, yields higher localized electromagnetic field intensities. In this work, through simulations, we show that using surface plasmon resonances, it is possible to couple light to nanomagnets and achieve significantly higher opto-magnetic field values in comparison to free space light excitation for the same incident intensity. We use two well-known magnetic materials Bismuth Iron Garnet (BIG) and Gadolinium Iron Cobalt (GdFECo) and couple these nanomagnets to a plasmonic resonator made of Titanium Nitride. Our simulation results show 10 times enhancement in the opto-magnetic field for BIG and about 3 times for GdFeCo in the coupled structure compared to free-space excitation. Our simulations also show the possibility of having in-plane components of the opto-magnetic field in the coupled structure which might prove beneficial for switching in nanomagnets with canted magnetization.

Mapping temperature distribution of optically pumped gap plasmon structure using thermoreflectance imaging (Conference Presentation)

Student contribution: Plasmonic systems are efficient in converting optical energy into heat hence show technological significance in solar thermophotovoltaics, nanoparticle manipulation, and photocatalysis, etc. Conventional techniques to characterize plasmonic heaters are mostly thermal camera- and thermographic phosphor (TGP)- based. In this work, we present our results of characterizing a plasmonic heater using thermoreflectance imaging (TRI). The TRI technique presented here outperforms thermal camera-based technique in spatial resolution due to the visible light utilized for illumination, and does not require special sample preparation as in TGP-based technique. We chose to use a gap plasmon structure to maximize the optical absorption, and fabricated structures with various dimensions that exhibit varying optical absorptions at a fixed wavelength of 825 nm, which is the wavelength of pump light used in the TRI measurement. The TRI setup uses a millisecond-modulated continuous-wave pump laser to induce local temperature fluctuation on the sample surface, a 530 nm LED probe light then senses the change in the temperature-dependent material reflectance between high and low temperatures, which combined with a pre-calibrated thermoreflectance coefficient can be used to calculate the temperature rise on each image pixel. This technique grants us a resolution of ~200 nm. The experimentally obtained temperature rise on various gap plasmon structures correlates well with their optical absorption, and we compare the results against a finite element heat transfer model. Using a separate pump-probe thermoreflectance technique, we experimentally obtain the heat transfer dynamics of such gap plasmon structure under laser irradiation with picosecond resolution.

MXenes for nanophotonic and metamaterial devices (Conference Presentation)

MXenes are a recently discovered family of two-dimensional nanomaterials formed of transition metal carbides and carbon nitrides with the general chemical form Mn+1XnTx, where ‘M’ is a transitional metal, ‘X’ is either C or N, and ‘T’ represents a surface functional group (O, -OH or -F). MXenes are derived from layered ternary carbides and nitrides known as MAX (Mn+1AXn) phases by selective chemical etching of the ‘A’ layers and addition of functional groups ‘T’.n nIn our work, we focus on one of the most well studied MXene, titanium carbide (Ti3C2Tx). Single to few layer flakes of Ti3C2Tx (in a solution dispersed form) are used to create a continuous film on a desired substrate by using spin coating technique. Losses inherent to the bulk MXene and existence of strong localized SP resonances in Ti3C2Tx disks/pillar-like nanostructures at near-IR frequencies are utilized to design an efficient broadband absorber. For Ti3C2Tx MXene disk array sitting on a bilayer stack of Au/Al2O3, high efficiency (>90%) absorption across visible to near-IR frequencies (bandwidth ~1.55 μm), is observed experimentally. nnWe also experimentally study random lasing behavior in a metamaterial constructed by randomly dispersing single layer nanosheets of Ti3C2Tx into a gain medium (rhodamine 101, R101). Sharp lasing peaks are observed when the pump energy reaches the threshold value of ~ 0.70 μJ/pulse. This active metamaterial holds a great potential to achieve tunable random lasing by changing the optical properties of Ti3C2Tx flakes.