What If Metals Could Conduct Light?

Metals Could Conduct Light:- Quantum physics is challenging basic concepts about how materials behave. One of these concepts is that, unlike transparent glass or plastic, metals cannot conduct light in their interiors. This is why metals look shiny—they reflect the visible light that strikes them. Specifically, most metals reflect visible light because their plasma frequency is in the ultra-violet range.

Now scientists have discovered that in the quantum metal ZrSiSe, electrons show exotic behaviors because their quantum mechanical nature manifests more readily than in common metals. With these exotic behaviors, electrons can give rise to what scientists call plasmons. These are collective oscillations in a material that are strong and long lived. Plasmons can combine with the photons of light, forming new modes called polaritons.

Polaritons can propagate inside the material bringing the photons along zig-zag paths that indicate how plasmon polaritons are guided inside ZrSiSe.

Because ZrSiSe consists of stacks of two-dimensional atomic layers that are weakly bound to each other, the material can be very thin. This makes ZrSiSe easy to integrate into new ultra-small optical devices. Moreover, due to their enhanced interaction with matter, polaritons can overcome some of the limits to resolution that occur when using visible light. This could enable microscopes that resolve details on the nanometer scale, smaller than the width of DNA. Newswise/SP