Abstract
Photonic components with adjustable parameters, such as variable-focal-length lenses or spectral filters, which can change functionality upon optical stimulation, could offer numerous useful applications. Tuning of such components is conventionally achieved by either micro- or nanomechanical actuation of their constituent parts, by stretching or by heating. Here, we report a novel approach for making reconfigurable optical components that are created with light in a non-volatile and reversible fashion. Such components are written, erased and rewritten as two-dimensional binary or greyscale patterns into a nanoscale film of phase-change material by inducing a refractive-index-changing phase transition with tailored trains of femtosecond pulses. We combine germanium–antimony–tellurium-based films with a diffraction-limited resolution optical writing process to demonstrate a variety of devices: visible-range reconfigurable bichromatic and multi-focus Fresnel zone plates, a super-oscillatory lens with subwavelength focus, a greyscale hologram, and a dielectric metamaterial with on-demand reflection and transmission resonances.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank A. Karvounis for assistance with computing the spectra of the dielectric metamaterial and D. Hewak for discussions. This study was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council UK (grant no. EP/G060363/1), the Singapore Ministry of Education (grant no. MOE2011-T3–1-005) and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) of Singapore (grants nos. 122-360-0007 and 122-360-0009) and the University of Southampton Enterprise Fund. Q. Wang acknowledges fellowship support from A*STAR.
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N.I.Z. conceived the idea of optical reconfigurable photonics devices. Q.W. built the experimental set-up and carried out the experiments. Q.W. and E.T.F.R. designed the experimental apparatus and carried out data analysis. B.G. prepared the experimental samples. C.M.W. designed the hologram pattern. G.H.Y. designed the super-oscillatory lens and performed angular spectrum simulations. Q.W., N.I.Z. and J.H.T. co-wrote the paper. All authors discussed the results and edited the manuscript. N.I.Z. and J.H.T. supervised and coordinated all the work.
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Wang, Q., Rogers, E., Gholipour, B. et al. Optically reconfigurable metasurfaces and photonic devices based on phase change materials. Nature Photon 10, 60–65 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2015.247
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2015.247
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