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Dynamic piezoelectric MEMS-based optical metasurfaces

Abstract

Optical metasurfaces (OMSs) have shown unprecedented capabilities for versatile wavefront manipulations at the subwavelength scale. However, most well-established OMSs are static, featuring well-defined optical responses determined by OMS configurations set during their fabrication, whereas dynamic OMS configurations investigated so far often exhibit specific limitations and reduced reconfigurability. Here, by combining a thin-film piezoelectric microelectromechanical system (MEMS) with a gap-surface plasmon–based OMS, we develop an electrically driven dynamic MEMS-OMS platform that offers controllable phase and amplitude modulation of the reflected light by finely actuating the MEMS mirror. Using this platform, we demonstrate MEMS-OMS components for polarization-independent beam steering and two-dimensional (2D) focusing with high modulation efficiencies (~50%), broadband operation (~20% near the operating wavelength of 800 nanometers), and fast responses (<0.4 milliseconds). The developed MEMS-OMS platform offers flexible solutions for realizing complex dynamic 2D wavefront manipulations that could be used in reconfigurable and adaptive optical networks and systems.
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Category

Academic article

Language

English

Author(s)

Affiliation

  • SINTEF Digital / Smart Sensors and Microsystems
  • University of Southern Denmark

Year

2021

Published in

Science Advances

Volume

7

Issue

26

View this publication at Norwegian Research Information Repository