Supplemental Material for Paper "Metallization of Nanofilms in Strong Adiabatic Electric Fields"

TL;DR

This paper discusses a quantum effect where dielectric nanofilms become metallic in optical properties when subjected to strong, slowly varying electric fields, with potential implications for nanophotonics.

Contribution

It introduces the phenomenon of dielectric nanofilm metallization under adiabatic electric fields, highlighting its size dependence and optical property transformation.

Findings

Metallization occurs at fields around 0.1 V/A.

Effect is exponentially size-dependent for 3-10 nm films.

Optical properties become similar to plasmonic metals.

Abstract

We introduce an effect of metallization of dielectric nanofilms by strong, adiabatically varying electric fields. The metallization causes optical properties of a dielectric film to become similar to those of a plasmonic metal (strong absorption and negative permittivity at low optical frequencies). The is a quantum effect, which is exponentially size-dependent, occurring at fields on the order of 0.1 V/A and pulse durations ranging from ~ 1 fs to ~ 10 ns for film thickness 3 to 10 nm.