Low-power design of electrotunable color filters and optical switches
Ashish Kumar Chowdhary, Debabrata Sikdar
Abstract
We propose low-power designs of electrotunable absorption- and transmission-mode color filters and optical switches based on a metal–dielectric–metal structure. By applying voltage across an electro-optic polymer, used as a dielectric layer, tunable color filtering is achieved over a voltage range of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mn>10</mml:mn> <mml:mspace width="thickmathspace"/> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">V</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> to <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mn>10</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:mrow> <mml:mspace width="thickmathspace"/> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">V</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> . Moreover, by adjusting each layer thickness, such designs can also be used as optical switches at 1550 nm telecom wavelength, exhibiting unmatched <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mo>∼</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mn>99</mml:mn> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">%</mml:mi> </mml:math> switching efficiency, operable with only 5 V power supply. Our theoretical results agree well with full-wave simulations. Our design is lithography-free, large-area compatible, power-efficient, polarization-independent, and angle-insensitive and has an extremely narrow bandwidth (12 nm).