Active and Passive Tuning of Mid-Far Infrared Surface Phonon Polariton Resonances

ORAL

Abstract

Resonant nanocavities designed for the manipulation of localized and propagating surface phonon polaritons on polar dielectrics hold great promise as an essential platform for mid-far infrared metasurfaces. Passive nanocavity arrays are constructed with deep sub-wavelength grooves of a metal-insulator-polar dielectric layered structure, which acts as a surface waveguide that supports coupled plasmon-phonon polariton hybrid modes. For active nanocavity arrays, vanadium dioxide (VO2) is a promising candidate as a spacer layer in the surface waveguide because VO2 undergoes a reversible insulator-to-metal phase transition near room temperature. Here, we employ SiO2 films as the passive and VO2 films for the active platform. These materials are applied on two polar dielectric substrates: sapphire and gallium arsenide (GaAs), which Reststrahlen band corresponding to the deep mid-infrared (10 - 20 microns) and far-infrared (28 – 33 microns) regions, respectively. we numerically and experimentally demonstrate passive and active tunable surface phonon polaritonic devices working within the Reststrahlen band. The devices consist of 40 nm thick gold and 100 nm thick spacer on sapphire and GaAs substrates. The cavity resonance shows redshifts as temperature increases for active tuning.

* *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.

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Presenters

  • Imtiaz Ahmad

    Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas Tech University

Authors

  • Imtiaz Ahmad

    Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas Tech University

  • Sundar Kunwar

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

  • Pinku Roy

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

  • Matthew Gaddy

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

  • Vladimir Kuryatkov

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

  • Ayrton A Bernussi

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

  • Aiping Chen

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

  • Myoung-Hwan Kim

    Texas Tech University, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA