Highly-oriented single-crystalline gold quantum-dot metamaterials as new prospective materials for photonics

Miniaturization of optical devices is a modern trend essential for optoelectronics, optical sensing, optical computing and other branches of science and technology. To satisfy this trend, optical materials with a small footprint are required. Here we show that extremely thin, flat, nanostructured gold films made of highly-oriented single-crystalline gold quantum-dots can provide elements of topological photonics in visible light and be used as high-index dielectric materials in the infrared part of the spectra. We measure and theoretically confirm the presence of topological darkness and associated phase singularities in studied gold films of thickness of below 10 nm placed on MgO substrates in the red part of the spectrum. At telecom wavelengths, the fabricated gold metasurface behaves as a dielectric with the refractive index of n~2.75 and the absorption coefficient of k~0.005.