Simulation of electromagnetic properties of metal-dielectric composite films using finite difference time domain method
Abstract
The advancements made in nanofabrication techniques have facilitated the development of materials with unique optical properties. Materials engineered from the ground up have revolutionized the field of optics by enabling the control of light in ways that were fundamentally impossible in the past. Metal based optical materials have especially shown promise in producing negative index materials, sub wavelength imaging, and the like. One such type of materials is Metal-Dielectric Composite (MDC) Films, which has potential applications in tunable superlensing that allows imaging beyond the diffraction limit, Raman spectroscopy, biosensing, ect. In the work presented in this thesis, a Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) simulation method is used to model the electromagnetic properties of MDCs. It is inherently challenging to model the material composition of these 3-D structures. In this work, the widely studied 2-D Semicontinuous Metal Films (SMFs) are used to model the composition of relatively scarcely studied MDC 3-D structures by modeling the MDCs as stacked SMF and dielectric layers. Studies conducted include exploring the parametric space to understand the effect of changing the thickness of the constituent layers. Since these structures consists of metal based plasmonic materials, a study on modeling electromagnetic properties of metals using FDTD method was also carried out.
Degree
M.S.
Advisors
Kildishev, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Electrical engineering|Optics
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