Semiconductor Bends Light The "Wrong" Way

This is rather interesting. This is a report on a new material having a negative index of refraction by using layers of semiconductors. Before this, these so-called left-handed material can only be found in metamaterials, which consist of conducting rods and split-ring resonators.

The metamaterial is made by depositing alternating layers of two semiconductors -- indium gallium arsenide and aluminium indium arsenide -- onto a substrate using molecular beam epitaxy. Each layer of the metamaterial is about 80 nm thick, which is much smaller than the wavelength of the infrared light.

This might provide a better, more controlled way of fabricating such material. Before this, it has been a tedious process to assemble one of these metamaterial, especially if one wants it to work in the viable region of microwave or shorter.

Zz.