Optical switching of a metamaterial by temperature controlling

Abstract

We have fabricated a metamaterial of metal/semiconductor/metal sandwich nanostrips structure comprising a pair of gold strips and a vanadium dioxide (VO2) strip. The optical response of the metamaterial has been studied. The results indicate the nanostructure with VO2 strips can be used as a temperature-controlling optical switch and the mechanism of this switch can be explained by the magnetic resonance.

Metamaterials: a new frontier of science and technology

“…Different modulation approaches were demonstrated, including electrically/optically pumping the semiconductor constituent of the metamaterials, [32][33][34][35] electrocontrol of the anisotropic optical constant of liquid crystal inclusions, 36,37 external DC magnetic field tuning 38,39 and the thermal effect. 40,41 Another interesting application of metamaterials is perfect absorbers, stemming from the possibility to design metamaterial elements which can individually absorb the electric and magnetic components of incident EM waves. 42,43 …”

Thermally switchable metamaterial absorber with a VO2 ground plane

“…For example, vanadium dioxide (VO 2 ) undergoes a metal-insulator transition at 68°C in the undoped state, and its conductivity changes dramatically across the transition by three to four orders of magnitude [15]. VO 2 has been incorporated in metamaterials to switch the resonances dynamical control of split ring resonator materials [16,17] and cutwire metamaterials [18] using temperature as the switching parameters.…”

Effect of the substrate on the insulator–metal transition of vanadium dioxide films

“…[1][2][3] It has an insulator-to-metal electronic transition (IMT) along with an allotropic transition from monoclinic (m-VO 2 ) to tetragonal (t-VO 2 ) lattice. [4][5][6][7][8][9] In the high quality single crystalline form of VO 2 the IMT occurs at 340 K and has a narrow hysteresis, but in physical vapor deposited (PVD) films the critical temperature, the width of the hysteresis loop, and the amplitude of the IMT depend strongly on the film morphology and stoichiometry.…”