Abstract

We engineer a tunable multilayered aluminum-doped zinc oxide metamaterial with low-loss and high-carrier concentration using the pulsed laser deposition. The results of the scanning probe microscopy study show excellent surface quality with a root mean square roughness value of $1.88\pm 0.07\mathrm{nm}$. The transmission electron microscopy measurements indicate a clear layer-by-layer structure of the multilayered samples. The optical permittivity results, obtained using the ellipsometry approach, show that the hyperbolic dispersion of the dielectric constant [$\mathrm{Re}\hspace{0.17em}({\epsilon }_{\Vert })>0$, $\mathrm{Re}\hspace{0.17em}({\epsilon }_{\perp })<0$] is achieved in the near-IR spectral range. The low imaginary part of the optical permittivity Im $({\epsilon }_{\perp })=0.003$ and Im $({\epsilon }_{\Vert })=0.011$ is achieved for the optimized sample at the epsilon-near-zero spectral point [Re $({\epsilon }_{\perp })=0$ at 1885 nm]. The results of the ellipsometry analysis show that the systematic variation of different fabrication conditions, such as the AZO/ZnO ratio, the thickness of an individual layer, the film’s total thickness, and the deposition temperatures, allows for tuning the plasma frequency ${\omega }_p$ and damping frequency ${\gamma }_p$ of the investigated samples, which is a promising approach for the future precise engineering of linear and nonlinear optical properties of multilayered aluminum-doped zinc oxide metamaterial.

© 2019 Optical Society of America

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