Liquid Crystal Enables Extraordinarily Precise Tunability for a High‐ Q Ultra‐Narrowband Filter Based on a Quasi‐BIC Metasurface

• Published in: Advanced functional materials 2024-10
• Main Authors: Yu, Binbin, Yang, Fei, Zeng, Mengdie, Meng, Xiangyu, Qian, Ziheng, Tai, Yonghang, Li, Tao
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1616-301X; 1616-3028
• DOI: 10.1002/adfm.202413098

Notch filters usually involve high costs, great difficulties in processing, and very limited tunability. By coating a nematic liquid crystal (LC) layer onto a well‐designed quasi‐bound states in the continuum (quasi‐BICs) metasurface, this work designs and demonstrates a high‐ Q tunable filtering system with precise tunability in the near‐infrared spectral range. Optimal structural parameters and the filtering performance are first determined by numerical simulations and then confirmed in experiments. The precise tunability is enabled by modifying the LC molecules’ principal axes with an applied voltage, where the least distinguishable central wavelength interval is smaller than 0.3 nm, and the largest Q factor extracted from experiments can be ≈256.1. Compared to most of the commercial notch filters that work in the visible region and have no tunability, this work achieves an ultra‐narrowband filtering system that features low manufacture difficulty and cost, and great control of light propagation. The proposed design also opens new avenues for developing BIC‐based high‐ Q devices with enhanced signal‐to‐noise ratio and multifunctional properties.