Tunable propagation of surface plasmon-phonon polaritons in graphene-hBN metamaterials

•Four reststrahlen bands were observed in graphene-hBN hyperbolic metamaterials.•A “epsilon near zero and pole” can be got by adjusting the chemical potential and the filling ratio.•Dispersion properties are controlled by the chemical potential. The tunability can be improved by the filling ratio of hBN and graphene, respectively.•Ghost modes with the vibration attenuation character are presented at a special condition. We present a detailed study on the tunable propagation derived from the coupled surface plasmon–phonon polaritons (SPPPs) with the effective medium theory (EMT) in graphene-hBN metamaterials (MMs). Four reststrahlen bands (RBs) are observed, two of which mainly come from the hBN and the others originate from the effect of the graphene. The RBs frequency windows can be adjusted by the chemical potential and the filling ratio. An epsilon-near-zero-and-pole(εNZP)hyperbolic metamaterial (HMM) is detected at the precise frequency, chemical potential and filling ratio where the HMM undergoes a completely inversion of anisotropy. We derive the relative dispersion relation and demonstrate that the propagation of SPPP modes can be regulated by modifying the chemical potential. In addition, the tunability of the graphene-hBN MMs also can be improved by changing the thicknesses of the hBN and the number of graphene sheets. The energy-flux density in the graphene-hBN MM seriously deviates from its wave vector and can be localized at a certain depth. Besides, the ghost SPPP modes with the oscillation-attenuation character are observed at some special conditions through checking the distribution of electric fields. The attenuation total reflection (ATR) measurement is established to examine these SPPP modes. The numerical results show that the observation of each SPPP modes requires different conditions dictated by material parameters and the polarization direction of the incident light.