A further comparison of graphene and thin metal layers for plasmonics

Abstract

Which one is much more suitable for plasmonic materials, graphene or metal? To address this problem well, the plasmonic properties of thin metal sheets at different thicknesses have been investigated and compared with a graphene layer. As demonstration examples, the propagation properties of insulator–metal–insulator and metamaterials (MMs) structures are also shown. The results manifest that the plasmonic properties of the graphene layer are comparable to that of thin metal sheets with the thickness of tens of nanometers. For the graphene MMs structure, by using the periodic stack structure in the active region, the resonant transmission strength significantly improves. At the optimum period number, 3–5 periods of graphene/SiO₂, the graphene MMs structure manifests good frequency and amplitude tunable properties simultaneously, and the resonant strength is also strong with large values of the Q-factor. Therefore, graphene is a good tunable plasmonic material. The results are very helpful to develop novel graphene plasmonic devices, such as modulators, antenna and filters.