Metallization of nanofilms in strong adiabatic electric fields

Phys Rev Lett. 2010 Aug 20;105(8):086803. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.086803. Epub 2010 Aug 18.

Abstract

We introduce an effect of metallization of dielectric nanofilms by strong, adiabatically varying electric fields. The metallization causes optical properties of a dielectric film to become similar to those of a plasmonic metal (strong absorption and negative permittivity at low optical frequencies). This is a quantum effect, which is exponentially size-dependent, occurring at fields on the order of 0.1 V/Å and pulse durations ranging from ∼1 fs to ∼10 ns for a film thickness of 3-10 nm.