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Original Article Open Access
Multi-cycle reconfigurable THz extraordinary optical transmission using chalcogenide metamaterials
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Abstract
Metamaterials composed of metallic antennae arrays are used as they possess extraordinary optical transmission (EOT) in the terahertz (THz) region, whereby a giant forward light propagation can be created using constructive interference of tunneling surface plasmonic waves. However, numerous applications of THz meta-devices demand an active manipulation of the THz beam in free space. Although some studies have been carried out to control the EOT for the THz region, few of these are based upon electrical modulation of the EOT phenomenon, and novel strategies are required for actively and dynamically reconfigurable EOT meta-devices. In this work, we experimentally present that the EOT resonance can be coupled to optically reconfigurable chalcogenide metamaterials which offers a reversible all-optical control of the THz light. A modulation efficiency of 88% in transmission at 0.85 THz is experimentally observed using the EOT metamaterials, which is composed of a gold (Au) circular aperture array sitting on a non-volatile chalcogenide phase change material (Ge2Sb2Te5) film. This comes up with a robust and ultrafast reconfigurable EOT over 20 times of switching, excited by a nanosecond pulsed laser. The measured data have a good agreement with finite-element-method numerical simulation. This work promises THz modulators with significant on/off ratios and fast speeds. -
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References
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Figure 1.
Configuration of the EOT metamaterials for the THz region. (a) Schematic of the all-optical, reconfigurable, non-volatile phase-change metamaterials induced EOT switch: single nanosecond pulsed laser transits a 100 nm thick GST225 film reversibly between the amorphous and crystalline states. (b) The FEM simulated transmission spectra of the chalcogenide metamaterials with the amorphous state at the various diameter of d = 40, 60, and 80 μm (top panel) and various heights of hAu = 50, 80, 100, 200, and 300 nm (bottom panel). (c) Optical microscope (top panel) and FIB cross-sections (bottom panel) images of the EOT metamaterials. The geometrical parameters of the subwavelength holes array are p = 100 μm, d = 60 μm, respectively; the thicknesses of the Au and GST225 layers are hAu = 0.2 μm and hGST = 0.1 μm, respectively. (d) The temperature-dependent optical conductivity (σ) of the 100 nm thick GST225 film. (e) The behavior of resonant transition in the metamaterials: numerical simulated (top panel) and experimental measured (bottom panel) transmission spectra at the various temperatures ranging from 25°C to 300°C. The reduction of the peak intensity can be experimentally and theoretically observed by increasing the temperature. (f) The modulation efficiency against the annealing temperature varied from 25 °C to 300 °C.
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Figure 2.
In sequence processing for the reversible state change. (a) Schematic of the reversible state change of the GST225 layer hybridised with an EOT metamaterials: the AD-AM GST225 is initially heated above TC=250 °C to switch to the CR-GST225 via a hot plate. A single ns pulsed laser is transited to thermally anneal the CR-GST225 layer above TM=600 °C that reamorphises the CR-GST225. Consequent quenching leads to the MQ-AM GST225. A temperature above TC=250 °C but below TM=600 °C is needed to recrystallise the MQ-AM GST225, which is achieved by using a hot plate. (b) The σ of 100 nm thick GST225 film at the various structural states of the as-deposited amorphous (AD-AM, black line), crystalline (CR, red line), melt quenched amorphous (MQ-AM, grey line), and re-crystallised (R-CR, orange line) over a spectral range of 0.2-1.8 THz. Experimental realisation of reversibly tunable EOT effect: the THz-TDS measurement of the transmission spectra of the chalcogenide metamaterials with the various structural phases of (c) AD-AM, CR and (d) MQ-AM, and R-CR.
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Figure 3.
Numerical simulation of total E- field distribution along the x-z plane of the metamaterials at the various temperatures of (a) 25 °C, (b) 150 °C, (c) 200 °C, and (d) 300 °C.
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Figure 4.
(a) Measured transmission spectra of the EOT chalcogenide metamaterials for twenty switching times. (b) The values of transmission peaks for the amorphous (shown by black dots) and crystalline (indicated by red dots) states with twenty switching times. The morphology (top panel) and cross-sectional (bottom panel) images of the chalcogenide metamaterials (c) before and (d) after 20 transition times.
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