Near-infrared tunable metalens based on phase change material Ge2Se2Te5

Sci Rep. 2019 Mar 29;9(1):5368. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-41859-x.

Abstract

Metasurfaces draw everyone's attention because they can precisely control the phase, amplitude and polarization of emergent light to achieve light field control in recent years. As one of the most practicable devices among the many applications of metasurface, metalens can extremely reduce the size as well as complexity of optical systems and realizes the higher optical quality compared with conventional lens. So it will be very potential to use metalens in integration systems to reaching higher integration and efficiency. In addition, dynamic control is always desirable in optical systems. In this work, we firstly design a near-infrared tunable metalens treating phase change materials as the meta-atoms which makes the tunable metalens become more compact. At designed wavelength of 1.55 μm, the focusing efficiency of our amorphous metalens is more than 16 times of the efficiency when it works at crystalline state, and its focal length can stay almost unchanged when the GST state is switched. The broadband performance of the metalens is also confirmed. This work may bring some good opportunities for the revolution of the next generation tunable integrated optics.