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NANOPHOTONICS

Tunable phase-change metasurfaces

Nature Nanotechnology volume 16, pages 615–616 (2021)Cite this article

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The use of phase-change materials makes metasurfaces and nanoantennas electrically tunable and switchable, bringing their functionality to the next level.

Compact and ultrathin metasurfaces, that is, two-dimensional arrays of subwavelength nanoantennas whose response depends on the properties of individual meta-atoms and their interactions, have been attracting a great deal of attention as they promise to supplant bulky lenses and mirrors1,2. Although metasurfaces have proven to be a versatile platform for passive optics, active tuning of their optical properties is still a challenging task. Phase-change materials (PCMs) open plentiful opportunities for implementing tunable metasurfaces as the reversible transition between amorphous and crystalline phases is accompanied by a considerable change of the refractive index3. Until recently, the tunability of PCM-based metasurfaces has been mostly limited to optical writing and thermal annealing. Now, works by Yifei Wang et al.4 and Yifei Zhang et al.5 independent of each other overcome these limitations by implementing electrical heating of phase-change materials, fully integrable with the existing optoelectronic circuits.

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Fig. 1: Schematic of tunable metastructures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Engineering, ITMO University, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Sergey Lepeshov

  2. Advanced Science Research Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Alex Krasnok

Authors
  1. Sergey Lepeshov
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  2. Alex Krasnok
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Correspondence to Sergey Lepeshov or Alex Krasnok.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Lepeshov, S., Krasnok, A. Tunable phase-change metasurfaces. Nat. Nanotechnol. 16, 615–616 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-021-00892-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-021-00892-6

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