A research group led by professor Cai Wei and professor Xu Jingjun from the School of Physics at Nankai University has made a series of progress in the direction of nano-scale light manipulation after a long-term exploration, such as nano-scale detection of optical properties of bilayer graphene with independent regulation of energy band and Fermi level (Nano Letters 21, 5151 (2021)), and controllable adjustment of artificially induced electronic boundary for reflection of graphene plasmon wave (Advanced Materials, 29, 1701083 (2017)), etc.

Recently, based on the plasmon mode of graphene acoustics of ultra-high local area in single-layer graphene/boron nitride/gold triple-layer structure, the group has observed that the mid-infrared light is subject to the strong in-plane scattering of undulation structure of atomic dimension under the condition that the ratio of the structural characteristic size to the incident wavelength of light is ten thousandths, and further realized the regulation by changing gate voltage. The physical mechanism is derived from the ultra-high local area properties of graphene acoustic plasmon, which can achieve about 100 times the compression of the mid-infrared wavelength. This research has important significance for the manipulation of light using nano-structures in atomic-dimension. The research result was published online in the international journal Nature Communications entitled "Strong in-plane scattering of acoustic graphene plasmons by surface atomic steps".

Nankai University is the first publishing unit of this research paper. Doctor Zhang Ni, associate professor Luo Weiwei from Nankai University, and associate professor Wang Lei from Xinyang Normal University (Ph.D. graduate of Nankai University) are the co-first authors. Professor Cai Wei and Professor Xu Jingjun of Nankai University are co-corresponding authors. The research is supported by the Major Project of Basic and Applied Basic Research Program of Guangdong Province, the Key R&D Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Thesis link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28614-z

(Edited and translated by Nankai News Team)