FABRICATION AND OPTICAL RESPONSE OF SILVER NANOWIRE METAMATERIALS

Abstract

Metamaterials have become an important area of research due to the freedom they can potentially provide in designing the optical response of a material. Engineering of the electromagnetic subunits means that the optical constants of a fabricated medium are not restricted to the limits encountered in nature. Metamaterials operational at visible frequencies require nanofabrication techniques so that the constituent subunits are smaller than the operational wavelength. Silver nanowires are useful as optical electromagnetic subunits because they can be designed to mimic natural electromagnetic subunits (i.e. atoms and molecules). Small nanowires exhibit particle plasmon resonances, and long nanowires follow the Drude model with a reduced plasma frequency.