Strong Modulation of Infrared Light using Graphene Integration with Plasmonic Fano-Resonant Metasurfaces

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that integrating graphene with plasmonic Fano-resonant metasurfaces significantly enhances infrared light modulation, achieving up to 90% reflectivity change and enabling tunable optical devices.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach combining Fano resonances with graphene to actively control infrared light reflection with high modulation depth.

Findings

Reflectivity modulation up to 90% achieved.

Strong light-graphene coupling enhances modulation.

Numerical simulations show phase control with constant reflectivity.

Abstract

Plasmonic metasurfaces represent a promising platform for enhancing light-matter interaction. Active control of the optical response of metasurfaces is desirable for applications such as beam-steering, modulators and switches, biochemical sensors, and compact optoelectronic devices. Here we use a plasmonic metasurface with two Fano resonances to enhance the interaction of infrared light with electrically controllable single layer graphene. It is experimentally shown that the narrow spectral width of these resonances, combined with strong light/graphene coupling, enables reflectivity modulation by nearly an order of magnitude leading to a modulation depth as large as 90%. . Numerical simulations demonstrate the possibility of strong active modulation of the phase of the reflected light while keeping the reflectivity nearly constant, thereby paving the way to tunable infrared lensing and beam steering