Electrically driven thermal infrared metasurface with narrowband emission

Abstract

Metasurfaces consisting of an array of planar sub-wavelength structures have shown great potentials in controlling thermal infrared radiation, including intensity, coherence, and polarization. These capabilities together with the two-dimensional nature make thermal metasurfaces an ultracompact multifunctional platform for infrared light manipulation. Integrating the functionalities, such as amplitude, phase (spectrum and directionality), and polarization, on a single metasurface offers fascinating device responses. However, it remains a significant challenge to concurrently optimize the optical, electrical, and thermal responses of a thermal metasurface in a small footprint. In this work, we develop a center-contacted electrode line design for a thermal infrared metasurface based on a gold nanorod array, which allows local Joule heating to electrically excite the emission without undermining the localized surface plasmonic resonance. The narrowband emission of thermal metasurfaces and their robustness against temperature nonuniformity demonstrated in this work have important implications for the applications in infrared imaging, sensing, and energy harvesting.