Tunable plasmons in few-layer nitrogen-doped graphene nanostructures: A time-dependent density functional theory study

Abstract

Compared with conventional metal plasmonic materials, surface plasmons in graphene are advantageous in terms of higher confinement, relative low loss, flexible featuring, and good tunability. However, the working frequencies of the pristine graphene (undoped graphene) surface plasmons are located in the terahertz and infrared regions, which limit their applications. Here we show high-frequency plasmons in nitrogen (N)-doped graphene nanostructures investigated by time-dependent density functional theory. We found the optical absorption strength of systems containing two layers to be more than twofold stronger than that of systems with monolayers. The optical absorption strength increases as the interlayer distance increases, and the absorption spectra are red-shifted for impulse excitations polarized in the armchair edge direction $(x$ axis). For microstructures of more than two layers, the optical absorption strength increases as number of layers of the N-doped graphene nanostructures increases. In addition, when the number of layers becomes elevated at low-energy resonances, the absorption spectra are seen to blue-shift. The plasmon energy resonance points are located in the visible and ultraviolet regions. The N-doped graphene provides an effective strategy for nanoscale plasmon devices in the visible and ultraviolet regions, despite their weaker absorption intensities when compared with the pristine graphene.