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Tunable indium tin oxide for metamaterial perfect absorbers and nonlinear devices

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Abstract

Indium tin oxide (ITO) has become a very useful plasmonic and nonlinear optical material because of its highly tunable electrical and optical properties and strong optical nonlinearity. In this work, the authors conducted detailed fabrication process studies by using high-temperature reactive sputtering to finely tune the optical properties of ITO thin films, particularly the epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) wavelength in the near and mid-IR spectrum. Sputtered ITO thin films are characterized by using spectroscopic ellipsometry, surface profilometry, Hall measurements, and 4-point probe testing. Additionally, the effect of post-deposition annealing of ITO films is also investigated.

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge support from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Program Manager Dr. Gernot Pomrenke) under award number FA9550-19RYCOR048 and FA9550-20RYCOR059.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. KBR, 2601 Mission Point Blvd, Beavercreek, OH, 45431, USA

    Evan M. Smith

  2. Air Force Research Laboratory, Sensors Directorate, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, OH, 45433, USA

    Joshua R. Hendrickson, Justin W. Cleary, Kevin Leedy & Shivashankar Vangala

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, AL, 35899, USA

    Junpeng Guo

Authors
  1. Evan M. Smith
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  2. Joshua R. Hendrickson
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  3. Justin W. Cleary
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  4. Kevin Leedy
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  5. Junpeng Guo
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  6. Shivashankar Vangala
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Correspondence to Evan M. Smith.

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Smith, E.M., Hendrickson, J.R., Cleary, J.W. et al. Tunable indium tin oxide for metamaterial perfect absorbers and nonlinear devices. MRS Communications 10, 573–578 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2020.62

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/mrc.2020.62

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