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The reflection of an optical wave from a metal, arising from strong interactions between the optical electric field and the free carriers of the metal, is accompanied by a phase reversal of the reflected electric field. A far less common route to achieve high reflectivity exploits strong interactions between the material and the optical magnetic field to produce a "magnetic mirror" which does not reverse the phase of the reflected electric field. At optical frequencies, the magnetic properties required for strong interaction can only be achieved through the use of artificially tailored materials. Here we experimentally demonstrate, for the first time, the magnetic mirror behavior of a low-loss, all-dielectric metasurface at infrared optical frequencies through direct measurements of the phase and amplitude of the reflected optical wave. The enhanced absorption and emission of transverse electric dipoles placed very close to magnetic mirrors can lead to exciting new advances in sensors, photodetectors, and light sources. 2Magnetic mirrors or high impedance surfaces were first proposed at microwave frequencies 1 . An important advantage of these mirrors is that a transverse electric dipole placed close to the mirror surface is located at an antinode of the total (incident plus reflected) electric field and, hence, can absorb and emit efficiently 2 . In contrast, a dipole placed close to a metal surface experiences a node of the total electric field and can neither absorb nor emit efficiently. At microwave frequencies these exceptional properties of magnetic mirrors have been utilized for smaller, more efficient antennas and circuits [3][4][5][6] . Magnetic mirrors can also exhibit unusual behavior in the far-field, through the appearance of a "magnetic Brewster's angle" at which the reflection of an s-polarized wave vanishes 7,8 .At optical frequencies, magnetic behavior can only be achieved through the use of artificially tailored materials and, as a result, relatively little work on optical frequency magnetic mirrors has been reported thus far. Recent investigations of magnetic mirror behavior at optical frequencies have utilized metallic structures such as fish-scale structures 9 and gold-capped carbon nanotubes 10 . However, the metals utilized in these approaches suffer from high intrinsic Ohmic losses at optical frequencies. Alldielectric metamaterials, based upon subwavelength resonators, with much lower optical losses and isotropic optical response have been used to demonstrate fascinating properties in a number of recent investigations [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] . In another recent work, magnetic mirror behavior was theoretically predicted for silicon dielectric resonators in the near infrared 26 . Although the reflection amplitude spectrum was measured in this work, no experimental phase measurements were achieved. In principle, this work is the same as our previous work 12 that only showed high reflectivity at the magnetic dipole resonance, which is a necessary but not...

One-dimensional silver materials display unique optical and electrical properties with promise as functional blocks for a new generation of nanoelectronics. To date, synthetic approaches and property engineering of silver nanowires have primarily focused on chemical methods. Here we report a simple physical method of metal nanowire synthesis, based on stressinduced phase transformation and sintering of spherical Ag nanoparticle superlattices. Two phase transformations of nanoparticles under stress have been observed at distinct length scales. First, the lattice dimensions of silver nanoparticle superlattices may be reversibly manipulated between 0-8 GPa compressive stresses to enable systematic and reversible changes in mesoscale optical coupling between silver nanoparticles. Second, stresses greater than 8 GPa induced an atomic lattice phase transformation, which induced sintering of silver nanoparticles into micron-length scale nanowires. The nanowire synthesis mechanism displays a dependence on both nanoparticle crystal surface orientation and presence of particular grain boundaries to enable nanoparticle consolidation into nanowires.

Pressure overcomes balanced particle interactions and enables fine-tuning of nanoparticle lattice, forming new luminescent nanowires.

Properties are presented for random and enhanced 〈100〉 orientation SrTiO3 and BaxSr1−xTiO3 (x=0.33, 0.50, and 0.67) films fabricated on base-metal 〈100〉 Ni tapes using a chemical solution deposition approach. Films were crystallized in a reducing atmosphere, which prevented Ni oxidation, but permitted growth of SrTiO3 and BaxSr1−xTiO3 films with dielectric loss tan δ between 0.003 and 0.015. For randomly oriented BaxSr1−xTiO3 (x=0, 0.33, 0.5, and 0.67) films, zero-field 100 kHz dielectric constants ranged from 250 to 420. Films with enhanced 〈100〉 orientation exhibited zero-field dielectric constants of 980 to 1500, three times higher than random films. Development of such high dielectric constants on Ni suggests a future method for inexpensive, high performance base-metal electrode capacitor fabrication.