The mid-infrared (mid-IR) spectral range (3-30µm) has become a burgeoning and dynamic field of research both for fundamental exploration and as well as for more applied research in health and the environment, security and defense, communication, and sensing. At the same time, the areas of plasmonics and metamaterials have experienced explosive growth over the past decade, fueled in part by rapid developments in fabrication, characterization, computational science, and theory. Yet, the integration of plasmonic structures into mid-IR optical systems has been slower to evolve. While scaling metamaterial and plasmonic geometries to mid-IR wavelengths is actually fairly straightforward, replicating the near-IR and visible optical properties of constituent materials in plasmonic and metamaterial systems is less trivial, leading to very different behavior of scaled systems in these two wavelength ranges.
In this talk, I will discuss our group’s recent work developing novel optoelectronic and plasmonic devices and structures for mid-IR applications. I will demonstrate the advantages and disadvantages of utilizing traditional plasmonic metals in mid-IR structures, and use this discussion to motivate our recent work with highly doped semiconductors as designer mid-IR metals for plasmonic, metamaterial, and epsilon-near-zero applications. In particular, I will show that such materials can enhance transmission through sub-wavelength apertures, as well as replicate many of the properties of traditional plasmonic metals at shorter wavelengths. Recent results demonstrating the potential of highly doped InAs, optically transparent to telecom wavelengths, for integration in to all-semiconductor based plasmonic systems will be presented.
In all, I will demonstrate that while only ~ tens of microns wide, the narrow width of the mid-IR spectral range width belies its capacity for exciting new research, both fundamental and applied.
Bio: Dr. Wasserman received his Sc.B. in 1998 from Brown University in Engineering/Physics (Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with Honors). He received his PhD from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University in 2004. At Princeton, Dr. Wasserman was a Francis Upton Fellow and a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow. Dr. Wasserman’s post-doc, as a Princeton University Council on Science and Technology Fellow, focused on QC laser physics in the Gmachl group at Princeton University. Dr. Wasserman is currently an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. His research team focuses on plasmonic and metamterial devices and structures, nanotechnology, and semiconductor-based material systems for the mid-IR wavelength range. Dr. Wasserman is the recipient of the NSF CAREER award, an AFOSR Young Investigator Award, and the 2010 Excellence in Teaching Award from the UMass Lowell Physics Department.