Experimental Demonstration of Phase Modulation and Motion Sensing Using Graphene-Integrated Metasurfaces

Year: 2016

Authors: Dabidian N., Dutta-Gupta SD., Kholmanov I., Lai KF., Lu F., Lee J., Jin MZ., Trendafilov S., Khanikaev A., Fallahazad B., Tutuc E., Belkin MA., Shvets G.

Autors Affiliation: Univ Texas Austin, Dept Phys, Austin, TX 78712 USA; Univ Texas Austin, Ctr Nano & Mol Sci & Technol, Austin, TX 78712 USA; Univ Texas Austin, Dept Mech Engn, Austin, TX 78712 USA;‎ Univ Texas Austin, Mat Sci Program, Austin, TX 78712 USA;‎ Univ Texas Austin, Microelect Res Ctr, Dept Elect & Comp Engn, 10100 Burnet Rd, Austin, TX 78758 USA;‎ CUNY Queens Coll, Dept Phys, Queens, NY 11367 USA; CUNY, Grad Ctr, New York, NY 10016 USA; Univ Brescia, Sensor Lab, CNR INO, Via Branze 45, I-25123 Brescia, Italy

Abstract: Strong interaction of graphene with light accounts for one of its most remarkable properties: the ability to absorb 2.3% of the incident lights energy within a single atomic layer. Free carrier injection via field-effect gating can dramatically vary the optical properties of graphene, thereby enabling fast graphene-based modulators of the light intensity. However, the very thinness of graphene makes it difficult to modulate the other fundamental property of the light wave: its optical phase. Here we demonstrate that considerable phase control can be achieved by integrating a single-layer graphene (SLG) with a resonant plasmonic metasurface that contains nanoscale gaps. By concentrating the light intensity inside of the nanogaps, the metasurface dramatically increases the coupling of light to the SLG and enables control of the phase of the reflected mid-infrared light by as much as 55 degrees via field-effect gating. We experimentally demonstrate graphene-based phase modulators that maintain the amplitude of the reflected light essentially constant over most of the phase tuning range. Rapid nonmechanical phase modulation enables a new experimental technique, graphene-based laser interferometry, which we use to demonstrate motion detection with nanoscale precision. We also demonstrate that by the judicious choice of a strongly anisotropic metasurface the graphene-controlled phase shift of light can be rendered polarization-dependent. Using the experimentally measured phases for the two orthogonal polarizations, we demonstrate that the polarization state of the reflected light can be by modulated by carrier injection into the SLG. These results pave the way for novel high-speed graphene-based optical devices and sensors such as polarimeters, ellipsometers, and frequency modulators.

Journal/Review: NANO LETTERS

Volume: 16 (6)      Pages from: 3607  to: 3615

KeyWords: Plasmonic metasurfaces; graphene; phase modulation; polarization modulation; Fano resonance; mid-infrared
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b00732

Citations: 79
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