Multiresponsive Dielectric Metasurfaces
Chengjun Zou, Cristina Amaya, Stefan Fasold, Alexander Muravsky, Anatoli Murauski, Thomas Pertsch, Isabelle Staude
Abstract
Tunable optical metasurfaces demonstrate a number of remarkable properties that are promising for realizing photonic devices for potential applications in telecommunications, holographic displays, and spatial light modulators, to name just a few. Integrating nematic liquid crystals (LCs) with dielectric metasurfaces has been established as an efficient tuning approach, which provides a large modulation of the metasurface optical response while being compatible with optoelectronic platforms and established LC-on-silicon technologies. Up to date tuning of LC-integrated metasurfaces using either temperature or applied voltage as separate external stimuli has been demonstrated. Here we introduce the concept of multiresponsive metasurfaces and suggest that the simultaneous application of two or more stimuli can expand the functionality of metasurface-based devices. To illustrate this concept, we present an experimental study where we combine electrical and thermal tunability of LC-integrated dielectric metasurfaces. By simultaneously applying both stimuli, we show that several new functionalities, such as tuning the modulation depths, nearly polarization-independent tuning, and gated response can be realized, all of which cannot be achieved with just a single stimulus. Our results establish multiresponsive metasurfaces as a new research direction in nanophotonics, and can be used for the design of novel metasurface-based photonic systems offering versatile dynamic control of the properties of light fields.