Active strong coupling of exciton and nanocavity based on GSST-WSe2 hybrid nanostructures.

The strong coupling between optical resonance microcavity and matter excitations provides a practical path for controlling light-matter interactions. However, conventional microcavity, whose functions are fixed at the fabrication stage, dramatically limits the modulation of light-matter interactions. Here, we investigate the active strong coupling of resonance mode and exciton in GSST-WSe2 hybrid nanostructures. It is demonstrated that significant spectral splitting is observed in single nanostructures, tetramers, and metasurfaces. We further confirm the strong coupling by calculating the enhanced fluorescence spectra. The coupling effect between the excited resonance and exciton is dramatically modulated during the change of GSST from amorphous to crystalline, thus realizing the strong coupling switching. This switching property has been fully demonstrated in several systems mentioned earlier. Our work is significant in guiding the study of actively tunable strong light-matter interactions at the nanoscale.

Real-time tunable notched waveguide based on voltage controllable ferroelectric resonator.

In the present study, we have devised and conducted an investigation into a real-time tunable notched waveguide, employing a voltage-controllable plasmonic resonator. This plasmonic resonator is meticulously engineered from a ferroelectric substrate featuring a compound multilayer structure, thereby conferring it with the remarkable capability of flexible permittivity control. Furthermore, we have implemented two non-intersecting Archimedean spiral electrodes on the surface of the ferroelectric substrate, dedicated to applying the bias field onto the controllable plasmonic ferroelectric resonator (CPFR). Notably, our system affords the capability to finely tune both the magnetic and electric modes, achieving precise adjustments of 8.7% and 11%, respectively. The performance is complemented by minimal insertion loss, rapid response times, and a broad range of potential applications, positioning it as a candidate for a diverse array of notched waveguide scenarios.

Second harmonic generation in an anisotropic lithium niobate metasurface governed by quasi-BICs.

Resonant metasurfaces can greatly trap the light fields, so that they are widely used to enhance light-matter interactions at the nanoscale, such as promoting nonlinear effects of materials. Lithium niobate (LN) is an excellent nonlinear optical material and is often employed to generate harmonic signals. In this Letter, we numerically study the second harmonic generation (SHG) characteristics of the LN metasurface based on the quasi-bound states in the continuum (QBIC). The designed BIC and excited QBIC metasurfaces always hold C4v symmetry, and the BIC is demonstrated to degenerate into two BICs due to the anisotropic characteristics of LN. Moreover, the excited two high Q-factor QBICs can effectively enhance the SHG in LN, although the device maintains C4v symmetry, the SHG signal still shows polarization dependence. In addition, with the increase of Q-factor of quasi-BIC, the power and conversion efficiency (η) of SHG increase significantly. The calculated η can reach 6.04 × 10-3 and can be further improved when the resonance mode is closer to BIC. These results have important implications for high-quality nonlinear light sources based on LN materials.

Strong coupling of excitons and electric/magnetic toroidal dipole modes in perovskite metasurfaces.

Effective manipulation of the interactions between light and matter is crucial for the advancement of various high-performance optoelectronic devices. It is noted that the toroidal dipole resonance refers to an electromagnetic excitation that exists beyond the conventional understanding of electric and magnetic multipoles, which shows great potential for enhancing light-matter interactions. In this work, we investigate the strong coupling properties of electric toroidal dipole (ETD) and magnetic toroidal dipole (MTD) with excitons in (PEA)2PbI4 perovskite metasurfaces. The nanostructure consists of two identical nanobars on a SiO2 substrate, which support ETD and MTD responses. The strong coupling between ETD/MTD modes and perovskite excitons is achieved when adjusting oscillator strength f0, which can be charactered by the clearly anti-crossing behavior appeared in the transmission spectra. The Rabi splitting can be readily tuned by controlling f0. When f0 increases to 1.0, their Rabi splitting values reach as high as 371 meV and 300 meV, respectively. The proposed strong coupling between excitons and ETD/MTDs paves the way for large-scale, low-cost integrated polaritonic devices operating at room temperature.

Toroidal Dipole BIC-Driven Highly Robust Perfect Absorption with a Graphene-Loaded Metasurface.

Achieving perfect absorption in few-layer two-dimensional (2D) materials plays a crucial role in applications such as optoelectronics and sensing. However, the underlying mechanisms of all reported works imply a strongly inherent dependence of the central wavelength on the structural parameters. Here, we propose a structure-parameter-deviation immune method for achieving perfect absorption at any desired wavelength by harnessing the toroidal dipole-bound state in the continuum (TD BIC). We experimentally demonstrate the versatile design with a monolayer-graphene-loaded compound grating structure. Such a TD BIC built upon the TE31 mode allows for the transition from BIC to quasi-BIC without breaking the structural symmetry, enabling the stable resonance wavelength while tailoring the quality factors via variation of the gap distance. Comparison with traditional literature further reveals the superiority of our method in realizing highly robust perfect absorption, with a wavelength stability ratio of >15. Remarkably, this approach can be straightforwardly applied to other 2D materials.

Ultrahigh-Q guided mode resonances in an All-dielectric metasurface.

High quality(Q) factor optical resonators are indispensable for many photonic devices. While very large Q-factors can be obtained theoretically in guided-mode settings, free-space implementations suffer from various limitations on the narrowest linewidth in real experiments. Here, we propose a simple strategy to enable ultrahigh-Q guided-mode resonances by introducing a patterned perturbation layer on top of a multilayer-waveguide system. We demonstrate that the associated Q-factors are inversely proportional to the perturbation squared while the resonant wavelength can be tuned through material or structural parameters. We experimentally demonstrate such high-Q resonances at telecom wavelengths by patterning a low-index layer on top of a 220 nm silicon on insulator substrate. The measurements show Q-factors up to 2.39 × 105, comparable to the largest Q-factor obtained by topological engineering, while the resonant wavelength is tuned by varying the lattice constant of the top perturbation layer. Our results hold great promise for exciting applications like sensors and filters.

Active quasi-BIC metasurfaces assisted by epsilon-near-zero materials.

Active devices play a critical role in modern electromagnetic and photonics systems. To date, the epsilon (ε)-near-zero (ENZ) is usually integrated with the low Q-factor resonant metasurface to achieve active devices, and enhance the light-matter interaction significantly at the nanoscale. However, the low Q-factor resonance may limit the optical modulation. Less work has been focused on the optical modulation in the low-loss and high Q-factor metasurfaces. Recently, the emerging optical bound states in the continuum (BICs) provides an effective way for achieving high Q-factor resonators. In this work, we numerically demonstrate a tunable quasi-BICs (QBICs) by integrating a silicon metasurface with ENZ ITO thin film. Such a metasurface is composed of five square holes in a unit cell, and hosts multiple BICs by engineering the position of centre hole. We also reveal the nature of these QBICs by performing multipole decomposition and calculating near field distribution. Thanks to the large tunability of ITO's permittivity by external bias and high-Q factor enabled by QBICs, we demonstrate an active control on the resonant peak position and intensity of transmission spectrum by integrating ENZ ITO thin films with QBICs supported by silicon metasurfaces. We find that all QBICs show excellent performance on modulating the optical response of such a hybrid structure. The modulation depth can be up to 14.8 dB. We also investigate how the carrier density of ITO film influence the near-field trapping and far-field scattering, which in turn influence the performance of optical modulation based on this structure. Our results may find promising applications in developing active high-performance optical devices.

Quasi-symmetry-protected BICs in a double-notched silicon nanodisk metasurface.

Bound states in the continuum (BICs) hold great promise in enhancing light-matter interaction as they have an infinite Q-factor. To date, the symmetry-protected BIC (SP-BIC) is one of the most intensively studied BICs because it is easily found in a dielectric metasurface satisfying certain group symmetry. To convert SP-BICs into quasi-BICs (QBICs), structural symmetry shall be broken so that external excitation can access them. Usually, the unit cell's asymmetry is created by removing or adding parts of dielectric nanostructures. The QBICs are usually excited only by s-polarized or p-polarized light because of the symmetry-breaking of the structure. In this work, we investigate the excited QBIC properties by introducing double notches on the edges of highly symmetrical silicon nanodisks. The QBIC shares the same optical response under the s-polarized and p-polarized light. The effect of polarization on coupling efficiency between the QBIC mode and incident light is studied, and the highest coupling efficiency occurs at a polarization angle of 135 ∘, which corresponds to the radiative channel. Moreover, the near-field distribution and multipole decomposition confirm that the QBIC is dominated by the magnetic dipole along the z direction. It is noted that the QBIC covers a wide spectrum region. Finally, we present an experimental confirmation; the measured spectrum shows a sharp Fano resonance with a Q-factor of 260. Our results suggest promising applications in enhancing light-matter interaction, such as lasing, sensing, and nonlinear harmonic generation.

Strong light-matter interactions of exciton in bulk WS2 and a toroidal dipole resonance.

Exciton-polaritonic states are generated by strong interactions between photons and excitons in nanocavities. Bulk transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) host excitons with a large binding energy at room temperature, and thus are regarded as an ideal platform for realizing exciton-polaritons. In this work, we investigate the strong coupling properties between high-Q toroidal dipole (TD) resonance and bulk WS2 excitons in a hybrid metasurface, consisting of Si3N4 nanodisk arrays with embedded WS2. Multipole decomposition and near-field distribution confirm that Si3N4 nanodisk arrays support strong TD resonance. The TD resonance wavelength is easily tuned to overlap with the bulk WS2 exciton wavelength, and strong coupling is observed when the bulk WS2 is integrated with the hollow nanodisk and the oscillator strength of the WS2 material is adjusted to be greater than 0.6. The Rabi splitting of the hybrid device is up to 65 meV. In addition, strong coupling is confirmed by the anticrossing of fluorescence enhancement in the hybrid Si3N4-WS2 metastructure. Our findings are expected to be of importance for both fundamental research in TMDC-based light-matter interactions and practical applications in the design of high-performance exciton-polariton devices.

Bound states in the continuum supported by silicon oligomer metasurfaces.

Oligomer metasurfaces have attracted a lot of attention in recent years because of their ability to drive strong resonance effects. In this work, by perturbing the symmetry of the structure, we find that there are a large number of resonance modes in the oligomer metasurfaces associated with the optical bound states in the continuum (BICs) near the communication wavelength. When the positions of two nanodisks of the hexamer oligomers are moved along the x- or y-directions at the same time, the mirror symmetry is broken, and an electric quadrupole BIC and three magnetic dipole BICs are excited. The results of near-field distribution of three-dimensional nanodisks and far-field scattering of multiple dipoles in each quasi-BIC reveal that the four BICs present different optical characteristics. It is noted that the method of symmetry breaking by moving the position of nanodisks can accurately control the asymmetric parameter of symmetry-protected BICs, which provides a route for the realization of ultrahigh quality (Q)-factor oligomer metasurfaces in experiment.

Active optical modulation of quasi-BICs in Si-VO2 hybrid metasurfaces.

Active optical modulation breaks the limitation of a passive device, providing a new, to the best of our knowledge, alternative to achieve high-performance optical devices. The phase-change material vanadium dioxide (VO2) plays an important role in the active device due to its unique reversible phase transition. In this work, we numerically investigate the optical modulation in resonant Si-VO2 hybrid metasurfaces. The optical bound states in the continuum (BICs) in an Si dimer nanobar metasurface are studied. The quasi-BICs resonator with high quality factor (Q-factor) can be excited by rotating one of the dimer nanobars. The multipole response and near-field distribution confirm that magnetic dipoles dominate this resonance. Moreover, a dynamically tunable optical resonance is achieved by integrating a VO2 thin film to this quasi-BICs Si nanostructure. With the increase of temperature, VO2 gradually changes from the dielectric state to metal state, and the optical response exhibits a significant change. Then, the modulation of the transmission spectrum is calculated. Situations where VO2 is located in different positions are also discussed. A relative transmission modulation of 180% is achieved. These results fully confirm that the VO2 film shows an excellent ability to modulate the quasi-BICs resonator. Our work provides a route for the active modulation of resonant optical devices.

Tunable light trapping in the graphene metasurface.

Graphene metasurfaces based on surface plasmon resonance can greatly enhance the interaction between light and matter at the nanoscale. At present, the resonance of graphene metasurfaces is widely used to enhance the absorption of atomic layer graphene, but little work has focused on the light field trapping capabilities it brings. In this paper, we numerically study the light trapping and manipulation of an asymmetric graphene metasurface. The designed device supports two resonant modes, and the multipole decomposition confirms that the electric dipole response dominates them. The calculated average electric field enhancement factor (EF) can reach 1206 and 1779, respectively. The near-field distribution indicates that the electric field is mainly localized in the graphene nanodisks. When the Fermi energy changes, the intensity and peak position of EF can be effectively regulated. In addition, when the polarization of the incident light is adjusted, the light field capture of the two modes is independently regulated. These results reveal that the graphene metasurface has significant light field capture and regulation ability, which provides a new idea for the realization of active regulation of high-performance low-dimensional optical devices.

Active magnetic dipole emission by the Ge2Sb2Te5 nanodisk.

Active light manipulation plays a critical role in nanophotonics. In this Letter, we investigate the modulation properties of magnetic dipole (MD) emission based on the phase change material Ge2Sb2Te5 hollow nanodisk (GST-HND). The results show that the amorphous GST-HND supports a strong MD response with a radiative decay enhancement of 282 times and quantum efficiency of 100%. More importantly, by tuning the crystallization rate of GST, the active manipulation of MD radiation is achieved with a quantum efficiency modulation depth of up to 95% at a specific wavelength. Our work may provide significant instruction for the active tuning of optical nanodevices.

Tailoring anisotropic absorption in a borophene-based structure via critical coupling.

The research of two-dimensional (2D) materials with atomic-scale thicknesses and unique optical properties has become a frontier in photonics and electronics. Borophene, a newly reported 2D material, provides a novel building block for nanoscale materials and devices. We present a simple borophene-based absorption structure to boost the light-borophene interaction via critical coupling in the visible wavelengths. The proposed structure consists of borophene monolayer deposited on a photonic crystal slab backed with a metallic mirror. The numerical simulations and theoretical analysis show that the light absorption of the structure can be remarkably enhanced as high as 99.80% via critical coupling mechanism with guided resonance, and the polarization-dependent absorption behaviors are demonstrated due to the strong anisotropy of borophene. We also examine the tunability of the absorption behaviors by adjusting carrier density and lifetime of borophene, air hole radius in the slab, the incident angle and polarization angle. The proposed absorption structure provides novel access to the flexible and effective manipulation of light-borophene interactions in the visible and shows a good prospect for the future borophene-based electronic and photonic devices.

Thermochromic VO2-SiO2composite coating from ammonium citrato-oxovanadate(IV).

Vanadium dioxide (VO2) coating plays an important role in energy saving and environmental protection due to its unique reversible phase transition. To solve the daylighting issue of VO2coating, a VO2(M)-silicon dioxide (SiO2) composite coating is fabricated from ammonium citrato-oxovanadate(IV) by a SiO2-assisted coating method. The VO2(M)-SiO2composite coating possesses excellent thermochromic properties that have produced varying results, i.e. 49.2% of visible transmittance, 52.3% of transmittance reduction at 2000 nm wavelength, 12% of solar energy modulation (ΔTsol) and a phase transition temperature of 56.0 °C. Our findings may pave the way to extending the large-scale application of smart windows based on thermochromic VO2.

Gain-assisted critical coupling for enhanced optical absorption in graphene.

Enhanced optical absorption in two-dimensional (2D) materials has recently moved into the focus of nanophotonics research. In this work, we present a gain-assisted method to achieve critical coupling and demonstrate the maximum absorption in undoped monolayer graphene in the near-infrared. In a two-port system composed of photonic crystal slab loaded with graphene, the gain medium is introduced to adjust the dissipative rate to match the radiation rate for the critical coupling, which is accessible without changing the original structural geometry. The appropriate tuning of the gain coefficient also enables the critical coupling absorption within a wide wavelength regime for different coupling configurations. This work provides a powerful guide to manipulate light-matter interaction in 2D materials and opens up a new path to design ultra-compact and high-performance 2D material optical devices.

Manipulating Optical Scattering of Quasi-BIC in Dielectric Metasurface with Off-Center Hole.

Bound states in the continuum (BICs) correspond to a particular leaky mode with an infinitely large quality-factor (Q-factor) located within the continuum spectrum. To date, most of the research work reported focuses on the BIC-enhanced light matter interaction due to its extreme near-field confinement. Little attention has been paid to the scattering properties of the BIC mode. In this work, we numerically study the far-field radiation manipulation of BICs by exploring multipole interference. By simply breaking the symmetry of the silicon metasurface, an ideal BIC is converted to a quasi-BIC with a finite Q-factor, which is manifested by the Fano resonance in the transmission spectrum. We found that both the intensity and directionality of the far-field radiation pattern can not only be tuned by the asymmetric parameters but can also experience huge changes around the resonance. Even for the same structure, two quasi-BICs show a different radiation pattern evolution when the asymmetric structure parameter d increases. It can be found that far-field radiation from one BIC evolves from electric-quadrupole-dominant radiation to toroidal-dipole-dominant radiation, whereas the other one shows electric-dipole-like radiation due to the interference of the magnetic dipole and electric quadrupole with the increasing asymmetric parameters. The result may find applications in high-directionality nonlinear optical devices and semiconductor lasers by using a quasi-BIC-based metasurface.

Polarization-independent toroidal dipole resonances driven by symmetry-protected BIC in ultraviolet region.

Optical resonances have gained great attention in nanophotonics attributing to their large enhancement of local field. In this work, we investigate polarization-independent toroidal dipole responses governed by bound state in the continuum (BIC) in the ultraviolet region. By introducing symmetry breaking, an asymmetric dielectric nanohole array is employed to excite two symmetry-protected BICs. Far-field contribution and near-field analysis are performed to demonstrate the dominant role of toroidal dipole in the above two modes. Our design shows the same responses under incident plane wave with different polarizations. The calculated enhancement factors also validate that these resonances can produce strong local field enhancement. Our work may provide a route towards resonators with polarization-independent responses and good performance.

Optical radiation manipulation of Si-Ge2Sb2Te5 hybrid metasurfaces.

Active optical metadevices have attracted growing interest for the use in nanophotonics owing to their flexible control of optics. In this work, by introducing the phase-changing material Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST), which exhibits remarkably different optical properties in different crystalline states, we investigate the active optical radiation manipulation of a resonant silicon metasurface. A designed double-nanodisk array supports a strong toroidal dipole excitation and an obvious electric dipole response. When GST is added, the toroidal response is suppressed, and the toroidal and electric dipoles exhibit pronounced destructive interference owing to the similarity of their far-field radiation patterns. When the crystallization ratio of GST is varied, the optical radiation strength and spectral position of the scattering minimum can be dynamically controlled. Our work provides a route to flexible optical radiation modulation using metasurfaces.

Black phosphorus-based anisotropic absorption structure in the mid-infrared.

Black phosphorus (BP), an emerging two-dimensional (2D) material with intriguing optical properties, forms a promising building block in optical and photonic devices. In this work, we propose a simple structure composed of a monolayer BP sandwiched by polymer and dielectric materials with low index contrast, and numerically demonstrate the perfect absorption mechanism via the critical coupling of guided resonances in the mid-infrared. Due to the inherent in-plane anisotropic feature of BP, the proposed structure exhibits highly polarization-dependent absorption characteristics, i.e., the optical absorption of the structure reaches 99.9% for TM polarization and only 3.2% for TE polarization at the same wavelength. Furthermore, the absorption peak and resonance wavelength can be flexibly tuned by adjusting the electron doping of BP, the geometrical parameters of the structure and the incident angles of light. Finally, the perfect absorption is also realized with the multilayer BP by simply adjusting the geometrical parameters. With high efficiency absorption, the remarkable anisotropy, flexible tunability, and easy-to-fabricate advantages, the proposed structure shows promising prospects in the design of polarization-selective and tunable high-performance devices in the mid-infrared, such as polarizers, modulators and photodetectors.