Gigahertz directional light modulation with electro-optic metasurfaces

TL;DR

This paper introduces a gigahertz-tunable plasmonic metasurface capable of high-speed beam steering by leveraging quasi-BICs and organic electro-optic materials, enabling on-chip spatiotemporal light control at sub-micrometer scales.

Contribution

It demonstrates a novel plasmonic-organic hybrid metasurface with gigahertz modulation speed and pixel-level control for beam steering, surpassing previous limitations in speed and resolution.

Findings

Achieved ~4 GHz electro-optic bandwidth.

Demonstrated light steering between three diffraction orders.

Enabled on-chip spatiotemporal control of light.

Abstract

Active metasurfaces promise spatiotemporal control over optical wavefronts, but achieving high-speed modulation with pixel-level control has remained an unmet challenge. While local phase control can be achieved with nanoscale optical confinement, such as in plasmonic nanoparticles, the resulting electrode spacings lead to large capacitance, limiting speed. Here, we demonstrate the operation of a gigahertz-tunable metasurface for beam steering through local control of metasurface elements in a plasmonic-organic hybrid architecture. Our device comprises a corrugated metallic slot array engineered to support plasmonic quasi-bound states in the continuum (quasi-BICs). These plasmonic quasi-BICs provide ideal optical confinement and electrical characteristics for integrating organic electro-optic (OEO) materials like JRD1 and have not been previously utilized in optical metasurfaces. We obtain a quasi-static resonance tunability of 0.4 nm/V, which we leverage to steer light between three diffraction orders and achieve an electro-optic bandwidth of ~4 GHz, with the potential for further speed improvements through scaling rules. This work showcases on-chip spatiotemporal control of light at the sub-micrometer and gigahertz level, opening new possibilities for applications in 3D sensing and high-speed spatial light modulation.