Vanadium dioxide-sapphire metasurfaces for actively tunable surface phonon polariton resonances at mid-infrared

ORAL

Abstract

Vanadium dioxide (VO2), a reversible insulator-to-metal phase transition (IMT) material, provides an actively tunable platform for photonics devices because the IMT makes a drastic change in VO2 optical properties. VO2 film grows well on a sapphire substrate because of the small lattice mismatch, a good quality VO2 film on sapphire has used many photonics applications for electrically and thermally tunable plasmonic devices at near- and mid-infrared. Beyond plasmonics, recent studies show phonon polaritons are more efficient ingredients in mid-infrared photonics. VO2 film on sapphire will be an attractive platform to develop phonon polaritonic metasurfaces because sapphire supports phonon polaritons at its mid-infrared Reststrahlen band (10 - 20 microns). Here, we numerically simulate and experimentally demonstrate thermally tunable surface phonon polaritonic devices based on VO2 film on sapphire working at sapphire's Reststrahlen band. The device consists of 40 nm thick gold grating (periodicity = 900 nm, gap = 100 nm) on 100 nm thick VO2 on sapphire. The cavity resonance is observed near 770 cm-1 and shows redshifts as temperature increases. We further studied different grating periods and gaps to observe the cavity resonance tuning and its dynamic redshift by heat.

*The work at Los Alamos National Laboratory was supported by the NNSA’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program, and was performed, in part, at the CINT, an Office of Science User Facility operated for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Los Alamos National Laboratory, an affirmative action equal opportunity employer, is managed by Triad National Security, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s NNSA, under contract 89233218CNA000001.

Presenters

  • Imtiaz Ahmad

    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas Tech University

Authors

  • Imtiaz Ahmad

    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas Tech University
  • Ivan Nekrashevich

    • Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
    • Fermilab
    • Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia, IL 60510, USA
  • Sundar Kunwar

    • lanl
    • Los Alamos National Lab
    • Los Alamos National Laboratory
    • Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT), Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
  • Pinku Roy

    • lanl
    • Los Alamos National Lab
    • Los Alamos National Laboratory
    • Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT), Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
  • Matthew Gaddy

    • Texas Tech University
    • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and NanoTech Center, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA
  • Vladimir Kuryatkov

    • TTU
    • Texas Tech University
    • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and NanoTech Center, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA
  • Ayrton A Bernussi

    • Texas tech university
    • Texas Tech University
    • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and NanoTech Center, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA
  • Aiping Chen

    • Los Alamos National Laboratory
    • lanl
    • Los Alamos National Lab
    • Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT), Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
  • Myoung-Hwan Kim

    • Texas Tech University
    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas Tech University