Plasma-Driven Tuning of Dielectric Permittivity in Graphene

Materials with tunable negative electromagnetic performance, i.e., where dielectric permittivity becomes negative, have long been pursued in materials research due to their peculiar electromagnetic (EM) characteristics. Here, this promising feature is reported in materials on the case of plasma-synthesized nitrogen-doped graphene sheets with tunable permittivity over a wide (1-40 GHz) frequency range. Selectively incorporated nitrogen atoms in a graphene scaffold tailor the electronic structure in a way that provides an ultra-low energy (0.5-2 eV) 2D surface plasmon excitation, leading to subunitary and negative dielectric constant values in the Ka-band, from 30 up to 40 GHz. By allowing the tailoring of structures at atomic scale, this novel plasma-based approach creates a new paradigm for designing 2D nanomaterials like nanocarbons with controllable and tunable permittivity, opening a path to the next generation of 2D metamaterials. A new 2D member of a family of strategically important metamaterials with negative dielectric constant based on graphene is reported. It is shown that tunable and negative permittivity values can be achieved by plasma-assisted incorporation of nitrogen atoms into a graphene framework to tune the plasmonic state of weakly bound pi-electrons. image