Electrical Tuning of Phase Change Antennas and Metasurfaces

The success of semiconductor electronics is built on the creation of compact, low-power switching elements that offer routing, logic, and memory functions. The availability of nanoscale optical switches could have a similarly transformative impact on the development of dynamic and programmable metas...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2020-08
Main Authors: Wang, Yifei, Landreman, Patrick, Schoen, David, Okabe, Kye, Marshall, Ann, Celano, Umberto, H -S Philip Wong, Park, Junghyun, Brongersma, Mark L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Antennas
Data processing
Infrared spectra
Light scattering
Metasurfaces
Near infrared radiation
Neural networks
Optical communication
Optical properties
Optimization
Phase change materials
Quantum phenomena
Refractivity
Switches
Switching
Thermal energy
Tuning
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Summary:The success of semiconductor electronics is built on the creation of compact, low-power switching elements that offer routing, logic, and memory functions. The availability of nanoscale optical switches could have a similarly transformative impact on the development of dynamic and programmable metasurfaces, optical neural networks, and quantum information processing. Phase change materials are uniquely suited to enable their creation as they offer high-speed electrical switching between amorphous and crystalline states with notably different optical properties. Their high refractive index has also been harnessed to fashion them into compact optical antennas. Here, we take the next important step by realizing electrically-switchable phase change antennas and metasurfaces that offer strong, reversible, non-volatile, multi-phase switching and spectral tuning of light scattering in the visible and near-infrared spectral ranges. Their successful implementation relies on a careful joint thermal and optical optimization of the antenna elements that comprise an Ag strip that simultaneously serves as a plasmonic resonator and a miniature heating stage.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2008.12903