Electrically Driven Reprogrammable Vanadium Dioxide Metasurface Using Binary Control for Broadband Beam Steering

Abstract

Resonant optical phased arrays are a promising way to reach fully reconfigurable metasurfaces in the optical and nearinfrared (NIR) regimes with low energy consumption, low footprint, and high reliability. Continuously tunable resonant structures suffer from inherent drawbacks such as low phase range, amplitude-phase correlation, or extreme sensitivity that makes precise control at the individual element level very challenging. We computationally investigate 1-bit (binary) control as a mechanism to bypass these issues. We consider a metasurface for beam steering using a nanoresonator antenna and explore the theoretical capabilities of such phased arrays. A thermally realistic structure based on vanadium dioxide sandwiched in a metal−insulator− metal structure is proposed and optimized using inverse design to enhance its performance at 1550 nm. Continuous beam steering over 90°range is successfully achieved using binary control, with excellent agreement with predictions based on the theoretical first-principles description of phased arrays. Furthermore, a broadband response from 1500 to 1700 nm is achieved. The robustness to the design manufacturing imperfections is also demonstrated. This simplified approach can be implemented to optimize tunable nanophotonic phased array metasurfaces based on other materials or phased shifting mechanisms for various functionalities.

Polarization-multiplexing graphene-based coding metasurface for flexible terahertz wavefront control

“…To realize active wavefront control, the combining schemes of the smetasurfaces with active materials or MEMS technologies that can introduce dynamically controlled phases are generally used [16][17][18][19][20][21]. For instance, thermal-controlled coding metasurfaces integrating with phase change materials have successfully implemented active beam manipulations [22,23].…”

Magnetoplasmonic Nanoantennas for On-Chip Reconfigurable Optical Wireless Communications

“…The radiation properties of plasmonic nanoparticles , have been exploited to replace conventional nanoelectronic interconnects that can be lossy and with narrow bandwidth for chip-scale communications. , Examples are the high-performance optical wireless nanolinks and highly directive nanoantenna designs, , which can be excited by integrated optical and electrical mechanisms. − Wireless broadcasting is nevertheless limited to point-to-point communication, that is, a fixed transmitting nanoantenna with a fixed receiving nanoantenna. There has been a numerical demonstration of electrically tunable beam steering, but only with an array of antenna elements. This is only applicable in the form of metasurfaces and not for a single nanoantenna, therefore being inappropriate for chip-scale applications.…”

“…8−10 Wireless broadcasting is nevertheless limited to point-to-point communication, that is, a fixed transmitting nanoantenna with a fixed receiving nanoantenna. There has been a numerical demonstration of electrically tunable beam steering, 11 but only with an array of antenna elements. This is only applicable in the form of metasurfaces and not for a single nanoantenna, therefore being inappropriate for chip-scale applications.…”

Fabrication of a VO2-Based Tunable Metasurface by Electric-Field Scanning Probe Lithography with Precise Depth Control

“…Owing to these features, VO 2 has been used in the fields such as smart windows, , logic switches, , memory devices, , and so on. Among them, developing functional metasurfaces has become a research hotspot due to the strong capability of shaping optical wavefronts in compact flats. − The VO 2 -based metasurfaces are further endowed with active tunability benefiting from MIT. Currently, VO 2 can be tuned through epitaxial strain, − hydrogenation, and optical excitation .…”