Optically reconfigurable metasurfaces and photonic devices based on phase change materials

Photonic components with adjustable parameters, such as variable-focal-length lenses or spectral filters, which can change functionality upon optical stimulation, could offer numerous useful applications. Tuning of such components is conventionally achieved by either micro- or nanomechanical actuati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature photonics Vol. 10; no. 1; pp. 60 - 65
Main Authors: Wang, Qian, Rogers, Edward T. F., Gholipour, Behrad, Wang, Chih-Ming, Yuan, Guanghui, Teng, Jinghua, Zheludev, Nikolay I.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.01.2016
Nature Publishing Group
Subjects:
639/624/1075/401
639/624/399/1015
Antimony
Applied and Technical Physics
Devices
Fresnel zones
Germanium
Holograms
Holography
Lenses
Nanostructure
Optical data processing
Photonics
Physics
Quantum Physics
Tellurium
ISSN:1749-4885, 1749-4893
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Photonic components with adjustable parameters, such as variable-focal-length lenses or spectral filters, which can change functionality upon optical stimulation, could offer numerous useful applications. Tuning of such components is conventionally achieved by either micro- or nanomechanical actuation of their constituent parts, by stretching or by heating. Here, we report a novel approach for making reconfigurable optical components that are created with light in a non-volatile and reversible fashion. Such components are written, erased and rewritten as two-dimensional binary or greyscale patterns into a nanoscale film of phase-change material by inducing a refractive-index-changing phase transition with tailored trains of femtosecond pulses. We combine germanium–antimony–tellurium-based films with a diffraction-limited resolution optical writing process to demonstrate a variety of devices: visible-range reconfigurable bichromatic and multi-focus Fresnel zone plates, a super-oscillatory lens with subwavelength focus, a greyscale hologram, and a dielectric metamaterial with on-demand reflection and transmission resonances. A metasurface composed of pixels of optically switchable phase change material yields a photonic platform that can be configured on demand to perform a variety of optical tasks.
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ISSN:1749-4885
1749-4893
DOI:10.1038/nphoton.2015.247