Approaching the Low Optical Loss Limit of Plasmonics using Potassium Metals

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates potassium as a promising low-loss plasmonic material with ultraflat films exhibiting significantly reduced optical damping, advancing the development of more efficient plasmonic devices.

Contribution

It introduces a novel fabrication process for high-quality potassium films and provides experimental evidence of their low optical losses in the visible to near-infrared range.

Findings

Potassium films show an optical damping rate of 3.7 meV.

Imaginary permittivity of potassium is approximately 0.1.

Deep subwavelength confinement of optical modes confirmed.

Abstract

Plasmonics enables the miniaturization of photonic devices beyond the optical diffraction limit,yet its potential is hindered by inherently large ohmic losses. Hence, it is prudent to explore low loss alternatives to the current mainstay of plasmonics-the noble metals. In this work, we demonstrate the potential of potassium as a plasmonic material with intrinsically low losses in the optical region. The ultraflat, high quality potassium film, fabricated via a rapid slipping-assisted oxide-free crystallization process, achieves an experimentally observed optical damping rate of 3.7 meV,with a measured imaginary permittivity of approximately 0.1 across the entire visible to near-infrared range (400-2000 nm). Near field optical spectroscopic measurements further confirmed the reduced losses by revealing deeply subwavelength confinement of optical modes. This result enhances our understanding of the factors governing plasmonic materials and devices and establishes a new platform for exploring extreme light-matter interactions in a variety of plasmonic systems.