Highly Tunable Phonon Polaritons via Metal Intercalation

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that metal intercalation in van der Waals crystals like $ ext{MoO}_3$ can significantly tune phonon polariton dispersion, enabling reconfigurable mid-infrared nanophotonics with preserved lifetimes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel metal intercalation method to control phonon polariton dispersion in van der Waals materials, surpassing previous non-mechanical tuning approaches.

Findings

Achieved up to 38.5% tunability of phonon polariton dispersion.

Preserved phonon polariton lifetimes after intercalation.

Validated dielectric modulation with theoretical calculations.

Abstract

Phonon polaritons in van der Waals crystals offer mid-infrared light confinement deep below the diffraction limit, making them promising for nanophotonics applications. However, the practical use of phonon polaritons remains limited, in part due to the lack of precise control over the phonon polariton dispersion, as crystal lattice vibrations are often inert to external stimuli. Here, we address this challenge by zerovalent metal intercalation of $\alpha$-MoO$_3$. Photo-induced force microscopy shows that introducing tin into the van der Waals gap modulates the phonon polariton dispersion by up to $38.5\pm0.5\%$, which is the highest amount of tunability among non-mechanical modulation approaches, to the best of our knowledge. Intercalation with various metal species preserves the phonon polariton lifetimes, while modulating the dielectric permittivity in agreement with the density functional theory and analytical calculations. Our results establish metal intercalation as a practical route to reconfigurable mid-infrared nanophotonics.