Experimental demonstration of tunable graphene-polaritonic hyperbolic metamaterial

Abstract

Tuning the macroscopic dielectric response on demand holds potential for actively tunable metaphotonics and optical devices. In recent years, graphene has been extensively investigated as a tunable element in nanophotonics. Significant theoretical work has been devoted on the tuning the hyperbolic properties of graphene/dielectric heterostructures; however, until now, such a motif has not been demonstrated experimentally. Here we focus on a graphene/polaritonic dielectric metamaterial, with strong optical resonances arising from the polar response of the dielectric, which are, in general, difficult to actively control. By controlling the doping level of graphene via external bias we experimentally demonstrate a wide range of tunability from a Fermi level of E_F=0 eV to E_F=0.5 eV, which yields an effective epsilon-near-zero crossing and tunable dielectric properties, verified through spectroscopic ellipsometry and transmission measurements.