Optical Self-Tuning of Ferroelectric Metasurfaces Infiltrated with Nematic Liquid Crystals via Photovoltaic Effect

verfasst von

Atefeh Habibpourmoghadam, Boris N. Chichkov, Antonio Calà Lesina

Abstract

There is a growing interest in lithium niobate (LN) as a material for integrated optics and metaphotonics. However, the limited strength of the electro-optic effect remains a challenge for the realization of optical tunability in LN-based nanophotonic systems. In this paper, a novel approach is introduced to enhance optical tuning. The proposed mechanism exploits the coupling between the photovoltaic effect induced in ferroelectric meta-atoms under light illumination and a surrounding liquid crystal (LC) medium. Specifically, the LCs can be locally reoriented by the fringe photovoltaic fields generated by the meta-atoms, whose spatially-dependent dielectric anisotropy is modelled with a tensor approach. The LC re-alignment in the vicinity of the meta-atoms ultimately results in the self-tuning of the metasurface optical response. The optical tuning of fundamental electric and magnetic metasurface resonances is numerically demonstrated via multiphysics simulations with and without the presence of an external voltage. This can result in high quality factor optical resonances, and their spectral shifts beyond what is achievable with the sole electro-optic effect. For the first time to the authors' knowledge, the photovoltaic effect is introduced as a tuning strategy in dielectric metasurfaces, opening new opportunities for reconfigurable nanophotonic devices, such as light modulators, optical limiters, and optical sensors.

Organisationseinheit(en)

PhoenixD: Simulation, Fabrikation und Anwendung optischer Systeme
Hannoversches Zentrum für Optische Technologien (HOT)
Institut für Transport- und Automatisierungstechnik
Institut für Quantenoptik

Typ

Artikel

Journal

Advanced optical materials

Band

13

Anzahl der Seiten

11

ISSN

2195-1071

Publikationsdatum

11.07.2025

Publikationsstatus

Veröffentlicht

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Elektronische, optische und magnetische Materialien, Atom- und Molekularphysik sowie Optik

Ziele für nachhaltige Entwicklung

SDG 7 – Erschwingliche und saubere Energie

Elektronische Version(en)

https://doi.org/10.1002/adom.202500532 (Zugang: Offen)