Electrically tunable transmission of gold binary-grating metasurfaces integrated with liquid crystals.

Planar photonics using metasurfaces is of great interest because a metasurface can control the flow of light beyond that attainable with natural materials. The resonance wavelength of a binary-grating metasurface is adjustable by changing the width and thickness of the nanostructure. We propose a novel combination of nematic liquid crystals and a binary-grating metasurface with which the diffraction efficiency can be controlled by adjusting the applied voltage.

Tamm plasmon selective thermal emitters.

Selective thermal emissions from the excitation of Tamm plasmon polaritons (TPPs) are demonstrated. A TPP structure is composed of a distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) and a thin metal film on top. The tunability of the thermal emission was experimentally achieved only by changing the DBR's photonic bandgap. Low cost and large area selective thermal emitters can be realized by TPP-based structures.