Nanomechanical control of metamaterial optical properties

Plum, E., Ou, J-Y., Valente, J., Zhang, J. and Zheludev, N.I. (2013) Nanomechanical control of metamaterial optical properties. Institute of Physics Singapore (IPS) Meeting '13, Singapore. 04 - 06 Mar 2013.

Abstract

Dynamic control over metamaterial optical properties is the basis for active metamaterials devices from optical switches and modulators to tunable spectral filters and programmable transformation optics devices. Here we demonstrate that reconfigurable photonic metamaterials provide a flexible platform for fast dynamic control of metamaterial optical properties. The properties of virtually any metamaterial structure strongly depend on the spatial arrangement of its components. By manufacturing plasmonic metamaterials on a grid of elastic dielectric strings of nanoscale thickness, we are able to dynamically rearrange plasmonic building blocks of sub-micron size across the entire metamaterial array. We demonstrate that this approach allows tuning, modulation and switching of photonic metamaterials via (i) applied electric voltages of a few volts, (ii) currents of a few milliamperes and (iii) magnetic fields of about 100 millitesla. Electrostatic forces become large across nanoscale gaps while elastic restoring forces are small in nanoscale structures. Exploiting this, we electromechanically modulate the optical properties of reconfigurable photonic metamaterials at a rate of up to 20 megahertz at microwatts power consumption. We also achieve electro-optic switching with a contrast of up to 250% and a switching energy of only about 100 femtojoules. Resistive heating of bimaterial structures leads to their deformation due to differential thermal expansion. Additionally, electrical currents in metamaterial structures placed in a magnetic field will be subject to the Lorentz force. Exploitation of these phenomena allows us to electromechanically modulate the optical properties of photonic metamaterials with a contrast of up to 60%.

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Contributors

Author: E. Plum

Author: J-Y. Ou

Author: N.I. Zheludev

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