Abstract
Devices with locally-addressable and dynamically tunable optical properties underpin emerging technologies such as high-resolution reflective displays and dynamic holography. The optical properties of metals such as Y and Mg can be reversibly switched by hydrogen loading, and hydrogen-switched mirrors and plasmonic devices have been realized, but challenges remain to achieve electrical, localized and reversible control. Here we report a nanoscale solid-state proton switch that allows for electrical control of optical properties through electrochemical hydrogen gating. We demonstrate the generality and versatility of this approach by realizing tunability of a range of device characteristics including transmittance, interference color, and plasmonic resonance. We further discover and exploit a giant modulation of the effective refractive index of the gate dielectric. The simple gate structure permits device thickness down to ~20 nanometers, which can enable device scaling into the deep subwavelength regime, and has potential applications in addressable plasmonic devices and reconfigurable metamaterials.
Highlights
Devices with locally-addressable and dynamically tunable optical properties underpin emerging technologies such as high-resolution reflective displays and dynamic holography
Hydrogen gating using ion storage layers has been achieved in solid-state tunable mirrors[15] and similar electrochromic devices[16], a simple, general means to locally gate hydrogenation in more complex optical and plasmonic device architectures is currently lacking
We show that a similar mechanism enables local, reversible hydrogen gating of optical properties in a wide range of metallic and plasmonic devices by covering the structure with a transparent gate oxide capped with a top electrode and applying a small voltage
Summary
Devices with locally-addressable and dynamically tunable optical properties underpin emerging technologies such as high-resolution reflective displays and dynamic holography. Following the initial work on yttrium, hydrogen-switched optics, such as mirrors[1,2] or other reflection-based optical devices[3,4], were realized with a wide range of materials including Pd and Mg5,6. Metals such as Mg are of particular interest as they can support plasmon resonances in the visible spectrum in nanostructures with suitable geometry[6]. Our approach permits switching speeds on the order of tens of ms, and device thicknesses down to several tens of nm It promises highly localized control of a wide range of optical properties for applications such as high-resolution reflective displays, hyperspectral imaging, and dynamic holography
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