Two-dimensional beam steering with tunable metasurface in infrared regime

Abstract

Tunable metasurfaces can change the optical properties of incident light at will such as amplitude, phase, and polarization in a time-dependent fashion. Ultrafast switching speed and the ability for the pixel size reduction of the tunable metasurface can allow various applications such as light detection and ranging, interferometric sensors, and free space optical communications, to name a few. Although there have been successful demonstrations of the wavefront shaping using the tunable metasurface, the implementation of the two-dimensional metasurface pixel array that can be individually addressed in the optical frequency regime still remains challenging. Here, we present the experimental demonstration of the two-dimensional beam steering with the metasurface array by the binary phase grating in the infrared regime. The metasurface unit cell is composed of metal–dielectric–oxide structure with the indium tin oxide as an active layer, which is modulated by using the top fan-out electrodes. The metasurface array is two-dimensionally pixelated and has the phase change above 137° in the infrared regime.

Keywords

• high-k dielectric
• lidar
• metasurface
• oxide semiconductor
• two-dimensional scanning