Van der Waals thin films of WTe2 for natural hyperbolic plasmonic surfaces

Chong Wang, Shenyang Huang, Qiaoxia Xing, Yuangang Xie, Chaoyu Song, Fanjie Wang, Hugen Yan*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

106 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

A hyperbolic plasmonic surface supports highly directional propagating polaritons with extremely large density of states. Such plasmon polaritons have been realized in artificially structured metasurfaces. However, the upper bound of the achievable plasmon wave vector is limited by the structure size, which calls for a natural hyperbolic surface without any structuring. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a natural hyperbolic plasmonic surface based on thin films of WTe2 in the light wavelength range of 16 to 23 microns by far infrared absorption spectroscopy. The topological transition from the elliptic to the hyperbolic regime is further manifested by mapping the isofrequency contours of the plasmon. Moreover, the anisotropy character and plasmon frequency exhibit prominent temperature dependence. Our study demonstrates the first natural platform to host 2D hyperbolic plasmons, which opens exotic avenues for the manipulation of plasmon propagation, light-matter interaction and light emission in planar photonics.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1158
JournalNature Communications
Volume11
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2020
Externally publishedYes

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