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Science 15 August 2008:
Vol. 321. no. 5891, p. 930
DOI: 10.1126/science.1157566
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Brevia

Optical Negative Refraction in Bulk Metamaterials of Nanowires

Jie Yao,1* Zhaowei Liu,1* Yongmin Liu,1* Yuan Wang,1 Cheng Sun,1 Guy Bartal,1 Angelica M. Stacy,2 Xiang Zhang1,3{dagger}

Negative refraction in metamaterials has generated great excitement in the scientific community. Although negative refraction has been realized in microwave and infrared by using metamaterials and by using two-dimensional waveguide structures, creation of a bulk metamaterial showing negative refraction at visible frequency has not been successful, mainly because of the significant resonance losses and fabrication difficulties. We report bulk metamaterials made of nanowires that show such negative refraction for all incident angles in the visible region. Moreover, the negative refraction occurs far from any resonance, resulting in a low-loss and a broad-band propagation at visible frequencies. These remarkable properties can substantially affect applications such as imaging, three-dimensional light manipulation, and optical communication.

1 National Science Foundation (NSF) Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC), 5130 Etcheverry Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720–1740, USA.
2 Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
3 Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cycletron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.

* These authors contributed equally to this work.

{dagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: xiang{at}berkeley.edu

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)