Broadband Electrically Tunable Dielectric Resonators Using Metal–Insulator Transitions

• Published in: ACS photonics Vol. 5; no. 10; pp. 4056 - 4060
• Main Authors: Butakov, Nikita A, Knight, Mark W, Lewi, Tomer, Iyer, Prasad P, Higgs, David, Chorsi, Hamid T, Trastoy, Juan, Del Valle Granda, Javier, Valmianski, Ilya, Urban, Christian, Kalcheim, Yoav, Wang, Paul Y, Hon, Philip W. C, Schuller, Ivan K, Schuller, Jon A
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Chemical Society 17.10.2018
• Subjects: reconfigurable; vanadium dioxide; metamaterial; active nanophotonics; metal−insulator transition; metasurface
• ISSN: 2330-4022; 2330-4022
• DOI: 10.1021/acsphotonics.8b00699

Dielectric-resonator-based nanophotonic devices show promise owing to their low intrinsic losses, support of multipolar resonances, and efficient operation in both reflection and transmission configurations. A key challenge is to make such devices dynamically switchable, such that optical behavior can be instantaneously reconfigured. In this work we experimentally demonstrate large, broadband, and continuous electrical tuning of reflection resonances in hybrid dielectric–VO2 devices. Our calculations, in strong agreement with experimental reflectance measurements, also indicate the presence of large transmission and absorption modulation. We additionally demonstrate independent modulation of both reflection amplitude and phase at Fabry–Pérot anti-nodes and nodes, respectively, a key requirement for metasurface design. We conclude with a temporal characterization, in which we achieve rapid electronic modulation rates of approximately 3 kHz, substantially faster than other recent approaches. These findings greatly expand the potential of designing nanophotonic devices that exploit the tunable behavior of hybrid dielectric–VO2 resonators.