Dynamic beam steering with all-dielectric electro-optic III–V multiple-quantum-well metasurfaces

Tunable metasurfaces enable dynamical control of the key constitutive properties of light at a subwavelength scale. To date, electrically tunable metasurfaces at near-infrared wavelengths have been realized using free carrier modulation, and switching of thermo-optical, liquid crystal and phase chan...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2019-08, Vol.10 (1), p.3654-9, Article 3654
Main Authors: Wu, Pin Chieh, Pala, Ragip A., Kafaie Shirmanesh, Ghazaleh, Cheng, Wen-Hui, Sokhoyan, Ruzan, Grajower, Meir, Alam, Muhammad Z., Lee, Duhyun, Atwater, Harry A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
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132/124
639/624/399/1015
639/624/399/1098
639/766/400/1103
Antennas
Beam steering
Electric fields
Graphene
Heterostructures
Humanities and Social Sciences
Lasers
Light
Liquid crystals
Metasurfaces
Microelectromechanical systems
Modulation
multidisciplinary
Optics
Optoelectronics
Phase transitions
Polarizers
Quantum wells
Reflectance
Resonance
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Spatial light modulators
Stark effect
Wavelengths
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Summary:Tunable metasurfaces enable dynamical control of the key constitutive properties of light at a subwavelength scale. To date, electrically tunable metasurfaces at near-infrared wavelengths have been realized using free carrier modulation, and switching of thermo-optical, liquid crystal and phase change media. However, the highest performance and lowest loss discrete optoelectronic modulators exploit the electro-optic effect in multiple-quantum-well heterostructures. Here, we report an all-dielectric active metasurface based on electro-optically tunable III–V multiple-quantum-wells patterned into subwavelength elements that each supports a hybrid Mie-guided mode resonance. The quantum-confined Stark effect actively modulates this volumetric hybrid resonance, and we observe a relative reflectance modulation of 270% and a phase shift from 0° to ~70°. Additionally, we demonstrate beam steering by applying an electrical bias to each element to actively change the metasurface period, an approach that can also realize tunable metalenses, active polarizers, and flat spatial light modulators. Here, the authors demonstrate an electrically tunable metasurface with III–V semiconducting MQW structures as resonant metasurface elements. The amplitude and phase of the light reflected from the metasurface can be continuously tuned by applying DC electric field across the MQW metasurface elements.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-019-11598-8