Optical tunneling in metal-dielectric multilayers and its application to optical filters

• Author / Creator

  Zhang, Minchang

• Metal-dielectric thin film multilayers are of significant interest as transparent conductors, band-pass filters, and metamaterials. This thesis describes an experimental study of optical tunnelling through periodic metal-dielectric (MD) multilayers with the goal of optimizing the transmittance for either propagating or evanescent waves. Surface-plasmon mediated tunnelling was studied in structures with a symmetric SiO2-Ag-SiO2 unit cell. Tunneling of TE-polarized propagating waves was studied in structures with a symmetric TiO2-Ag-TiO2 unit cell. In both cases, reasonable agreement between experimental results and theoretical predictions was obtained, indicating that potential transmittance theory and admittance-matching concepts can be used to optimize the transmittance of such structures. However, more predictable and stable results were obtained for the SiO2-based structures compared to the TiO2-based structures, which was attributed to oxidation of the Ag layers in the latter case. This motivated a study on alternative termination strategies to improve the peak transmittance of Ag/SiO2-based multilayers.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Fluorescence
  • Optics
  • Surface plasmon
  • Photonics
  • Optical tunneling
  • Metal dielectric
  • Optical filters

• Graduation date

  Fall 2013

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3Z979

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.