Resistive coupling of localized plasmon resonances in metallic nanostripes through a graphene layer

Graphene is a two dimensional, one-atom thick layer of carbon atoms with many exceptional properties. Plasmonics allows manipulation of light at the nanometer scale, with potential applications for super-fast, subwavelength optics. Incorporating graphene into plasmonic metamaterials has potential applications for novel active optical devices, exploiting the high sensitivity of graphene to bias voltage to enable control of the plasmonic resonances. This work demonstrates that the coupling of the localized surface plasmon resonances of closely- spaced metallic nanostripes is significantly modified by the presence of a graphene layer. The resonances in question lie in the visible and near infra-red, important areas for many applications. We propose that the observed effect is due to resistive coupling of the metallic stripes through the highly conductive graphene layer.