Nonvolatile chirality switching in terahertz chalcogenide metasurfaces

Jiaxin Bao; Xieyu Chen; Kuan Liu; Yu Zhan; Haiyang Li; Shoujun Zhang; Yihan Xu; Zhen Tian; Tun Cao

doi:10.1038/s41378-022-00445-4

Nonvolatile chirality switching in terahertz chalcogenide metasurfaces

Microsyst Nanoeng. 2022 Sep 30:8:112. doi: 10.1038/s41378-022-00445-4. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Jiaxin Bao^#¹, Xieyu Chen^#², Kuan Liu¹, Yu Zhan¹, Haiyang Li¹, Shoujun Zhang², Yihan Xu², Zhen Tian², Tun Cao^#¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Optoelectronic Engineering and Instrumentation Science, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024 P. R. China.
² Center for Terahertz waves and College of Precision Instrument and Optoelectronics Engineering, Tianjin University, and the Key Laboratory of Optoelectronics Information and Technology (Ministry of Education), Tianjin, 300072 P. R. China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Actively controlling the polarization states of terahertz (THz) waves is essential for polarization-sensitive spectroscopy, which has various applications in anisotropy imaging, noncontact Hall measurement, and vibrational circular dichroism. In the THz regime, the lack of a polarization modulator hinders the development of this spectroscopy. We theoretically and experimentally demonstrate that conjugated bilayer chiral metamaterials (CMMs) integrated with Ge₂Sb₂Te₅ (GST225) active components can achieve nonvolatile and continuously tunable optical activity in the THz region. A THz time-domain spectroscopic system was used to characterize the device, showing a tunable ellipticity (from ‒36° to 0°) and rotation of the plane polarization (from 32° to 0°) at approximately 0.73 THz by varying the GST225 state from amorphous (AM) to crystalline (CR). Moreover, a continuously tunable chiroptical response was experimentally observed by partially crystallizing the GST225, which can create intermediate states, having regions of both AM and CR states. Note that the GST225 has an advantage of nonvolatility over the other active elements and does not require any energy to retain its structural state. Our work allows the development of THz metadevices capable of actively manipulating the polarization of THz waves and may find applications for dynamically tunable THz circular polarizers and polarization modulators for THz emissions.

Keywords: Micro-optics; Nanophotonics and plasmonics.