We report nanoscale-resolved optical investigations on the local material properties of Sb2Te3 hexagonal platelets grown by solvothermal synthesis. Using mid-infrared near-field microscopy, we find a highly symmetric pattern, which is correlated to a growth spiral and which extends over the entire platelet. As the origin of the optical contrast, we identify domains with different densities of charge carriers. On Sb2Te3 samples grown by other means, we did not find a comparable domain structure.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nl503697c | DOI Listing |
Nat Commun
November 2024
Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, Madison, WI, 53706, USA.
Scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscopy (s-SNOM) enables sub-diffraction spectroscopy, featuring high sensitivity to small spatial permittivity variations of the sample surface. However, due to the complexity of the near-field probe-sample interaction, the quantitative extraction of the complex permittivity leads to a computationally demanding inverse problem, requiring further approximation of the system to an invertible model. Black-box calibration methods, similar to those applied to microwave vector network analyzers, allow the extraction of the permittivity without detailed electromagnetic modeling of the probe-sample interaction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Commun
October 2024
ICFO - Institut de Ciències Fotòniques, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Castelldefels (Barcelona), Spain.
Mid-Infrared (MIR) chemical imaging provides rich chemical information of biological samples in a label-free and non-destructive manner. Yet, its adoption to live-cell analysis is limited by the strong attenuation of MIR light in water, often necessitating cell culture geometries that are incompatible with the prolonged viability of cells and with standard high-throughput workflow. Here, we introduce a new approach to MIR microscopy, where cells are imaged through their localized near-field interaction with a plasmonic metasurface.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNanomaterials (Basel)
August 2024
Materials Research and Education Center, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849, USA.
Polar van der Waals (vdW) crystals, composed of atomic layers held together by vdW forces, can host phonon polaritons-quasiparticles arising from the interaction between photons in free-space light and lattice vibrations in polar materials. These crystals offer advantages such as easy fabrication, low Ohmic loss, and optical confinement. Recently, hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), known for having hyperbolicity in the mid-infrared range, has been used to explore multiple modes with high optical confinement.
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