Systematic Study of Amorphous ABC Heterostructures at the Atomic Scale as a Second-Order Nonlinear Optical Metamaterial

Systematic exploration of amorphous ABC heterostructures revealed that nanoscale morphological modifications markedly improved their artificial bulk second-order susceptibility. These amorphous birefringent heterostructures were fabricated through plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition of three oxides, effectively breaking the centrosymmetry on the nanoscale. We observe a dependence of the optical nonlinearity on the thickness variation of three constituent materials, SiO$_2$, TiO$_2$, and Al$_2$O$_3$, ranging from tens of nanometers to the atomic scale, and these thin films exhibit second-order susceptibility at their interfaces. Our findings reveal that the enhancement of nonlinear optical properties is strongly correlated with a high density of layers and superior interface quality, where the interface second-order nonlinearity transitions to bulk-like second-harmonic generation. An effective bulk second-order susceptibility of $χ_{zzz} = 2.0 \pm 0.2$~pm/V at the wavelength of 1032~nm is achieved, comparable to typical values for conventional monocrystalline nonlinear materials.

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