Press releases
Please quote Nature Materials as the source of these items.
October 2007
Negative light brings positive aspects to semiconductors
A semiconductor structure that shows the unusual phenomenon of negative refraction — in which light is bent the opposite way to normal — is reported online this week in Nature Materials.
Negative refraction has previously only been observed in artificial constructs such as small metallic wires or loops formed by complex lithographic processes. Now Anthony Hoffman and colleagues present a semiconductor material that requires no additional nanofabrication beyond the initial growth process, and that shows negative refraction for a broad range of infrared wavelengths.
No natural material showing negative refraction has yet been found, but the discovery of the effect in a new class of materials that consist simply of thin, alternating layers of two semiconductors, means that design and fabrication of negative-refractive-index materials will be much easier. Moreover, it is straightforward to integrate these materials into other semiconductor structures for photonic applications such as imaging or the guidance of light.
