Hybrid-2D Excitonic Metasurfaces for Complex Amplitude Modulation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a hybrid-2D excitonic metasurface platform that enables independent and full-range control of amplitude and phase of visible light, facilitating advanced wavefront shaping and beam steering.

Contribution

The work presents an inverse-design approach using monolayer WS2 for electrically tunable, independent amplitude and phase modulation in metasurfaces operating in the visible spectrum.

Findings

Achieved a pi-phase modulator with uniform amplitude.

Demonstrated independent amplitude and phase control over 0-2pi range.

Enabled reconfigurable beam steering in the visible regime.

Abstract

Dynamic control of visible light is crucial for technologies such as holographic displays and adaptive optics. Passive metasurfaces can shape wavefronts at the subwavelength scale and active metasurfaces promise to extend this functionality into the temporal domain. However, existing metasurfaces for dynamic phase manipulation typically cannot deliver phase modulation across a broad range without causing variations in the scattering amplitude. Here, we use an inverse-design pipeline to numerically demonstrate a hybrid-2D excitonic metasurface platform offering independent amplitude and phase control in the visible regime. Harnessing the gate-tunable excitonic response of monolayer WS2 retrieved from experiments, we design a pi-phase modulator with a uniform amplitude profile. Adding a second tunable monolayer, we achieve independent control of the amplitude and phase over the full 0-2pi phase range, which we leverage for a reconfigurable beam-steering metadevice. Our results demonstrate how hybrid-2D excitonic metasurfaces enable electrically tunable wavefront shaping in the visible regime.