Volume 11, Issue 3

In the past ten years, terahertz technology has developed rapidly in wireless communications, spectroscopy, and imaging. Various functional devices have been developed, such as filters, absorbers, polarizers, mixers, and modulators. Among these, the terahertz phase modulation is a current research hotspot. It is the core technology to realize flexible control of the terahertz wavefront, beam scanning, focusing deflection. It is indispensable in terahertz wireless communication, high-resolution imaging, and radar systems. This review summarizes the research progress of terahertz phase modulators from the two major types: free space and guided wave integration. Among these, the free space terahertz phase modulator is realized by combining the tunable materials and artificial metasurfaces. Based on different types of tunable materials, the terahertz free space phase modulator combining the semiconductor, liquid crystal, phase change materials, graphene, and other two-dimensional materials are introduced, and the influence of different materials on the phase modulation performance is discussed and analyzed. The monolithic integration and waveguide embedding methods are introduced separately, and the characteristics of different forms of terahertz-guided wave phase modulation are also discussed. Finally, the development trends of terahertz phase modulators, possible new methods, and future application requirements are discussed.

With the growing interest in the field of artificial materials, more advanced and sophisticated functionalities are required from phononic crystals and acoustic metamaterials. This implies a high computational effort and cost, and still the efficiency of the designs may be not sufficient. With the help of third-wave artificial intelligence technologies, the design schemes of these materials are undergoing a new revolution. As an important branch of artificial intelligence, machine learning paves the way to new technological innovations by stimulating the exploration of structural design. Machine learning provides a powerful means of achieving an efficient and accurate design process by exploring nonlinear physical patterns in high-dimensional space, based on data sets of candidate structures. Many advanced machine learning algorithms, such as deep neural networks, unsupervised manifold clustering, reinforcement learning and so forth, have been widely and deeply investigated for structural design. In this review, we summarize the recent works on the combination of phononic metamaterials and machine learning. We provide an overview of machine learning on structural design. Then discuss machine learning driven on-demand design of phononic metamaterials for acoustic and elastic waves functions, topological phases and atomic-scale phonon properties. Finally, we summarize the current state of the art and provide a prospective of the future development directions.

Three-dimensional (3D) printing enables the fabrication of complex, highly customizable structures, which are difficult to fabricate using conventional fabrication methods. Recently, the concept of four-dimensional (4D) printing has emerged, which adds active and responsive functions to 3D-printed structures. Deployable or adaptive structures with desired structural and functional changes can be fabricated using 4D printing; thus, 4D printing can be applied to actuators, soft robots, sensors, medical devices, and active and reconfigurable photonic devices. The shape of 3D-printed structures can be transformed in response to external stimuli, such as heat, light, electric and magnetic fields, and humidity. Light has unique advantages as a stimulus for active devices because it can remotely and selectively induce structural changes. There have been studies on the light activation of nanomaterial composites, but they were limited to rather simple planar structures. Recently, the light activation of 3D-printed complex structures has attracted increasing attention. However, there has been no comprehensive review of this emerging topic yet. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of the light activation of 3D-printed structures. First, we introduce representative smart materials and general shape-changing mechanisms in 4D printing. Then, we focus on the design and recent demonstration of remote light activation, particularly detailing photothermal activations based on nanomaterial composites. We explain the light activation of 3D-printed structures from the millimeter to sub-micrometer scale.

Plasmonic radial breathing mode (RBM), featured with radially oscillating charge density, arises from the surface plasmon waves confined in the flat nanoparticles. The zero net dipole moment endows the RBM with an extremely low radiation yet a remarkable intense local field. On the other hand, owing to the dark mode nature, the RBMs routinely escape from the optical measurements, severely preventing their applications in optoelectronics and nanophotonics. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the existence of RBM in a hexagonal Au nanoplate-on-mirror nanocavity using a far-field linear-polarized light source. The polarization-resolved scattering measurements cooperated with the full-wave simulations elucidate that the RBM originates from the standing plasmon waves residing in the Au nanoplate. Further numerical analysis shows the RBM possesses the remarkable capability of local field enhancement over the other dark modes in the same nanocavity. Moreover, the RBM is sensitive to the gap and nanoplate size of the nanocavity, providing a straightforward way to tailor the wavelength of RBM from the visible to near-infrared region. Our approach provides a facile optical path to access to the plasmonic RBMs and may open up a new route to explore the intriguing applications of RBM, including surface-enhanced Raman scattering, enhanced nonlinear effects, nanolasers, biological and chemical sensing.

Metasurfaces with ultrathin artificial structures have attracted much attention because of their unprecedented capability in light manipulations. The recent development of metasurfaces with controllable responses opens up new opportunities in various applications. Moreover, metasurfaces composed of twisted chiral structures can generate asymmetric responses for opposite incidence, leading to more degrees of freedom in wave detections and controls. However, most past studies had focused on the amplitude responses, not to mention using bi-directional phase responses, in the characterization and light manipulation of chiral metasurfaces. Here, we report a birefringent interference approach to achieve a controllable asymmetric bi-directional transmission phase from planar chiral metasurface by tuning the orientation of the metasurface with respect to the optical axis of an add-on birefringent substrate. To demonstrate our approach, we fabricate planar Au sawtooth nanoarray metasurface and measure the asymmetric transmission phase of the metasurface placed on a birefringent sapphire crystal slab. The Au sawtooth metasurface-sapphire system exhibits large oscillatory behavior for the asymmetric transmission phase with the tuning parameter. We confirm our experimental results by Jones matrix calculations using data obtained from full-wave simulations for the metasurface. Our approach in the characterization and light manipulation of metasurfaces with controllable responses is simple and nondestructive, enabling new functionalities and potential applications in optical communication, imaging, and remote sensing.

Plasmonic sensors exhibit tremendous potential to accomplish real-time, label-free, and high-sensitivity biosensing. Gold nanohole array (GNA) is one of the classic plasmonic nanostructures that can be readily fabricated and integrated into microfluidic platforms for a variety of applications. Even though GNA has been widely studied, new phenomena and applications are still emerging continuously expanding its capabilities. In this article, we demonstrated narrow-band high-order resonances enabled by Rayleigh anomaly in the nanohole arrays that are fabricated by scalable colloidal lithography. We fabricated large-area GNAs with different hole diameters, and investigated their transmission characteristics both numerically and experimentally. We showed that mode hybridization between the plasmon mode of the nanoholes and Rayleigh anomaly of the array could give rise to high-quality decapole resonance with a unique nearfield profile. We experimentally achieved a refractive index sensitivity, i.e., RIS up to 407 nm/RIU. More importantly, we introduced a spectrometer-free refractive index sensing based on lens-free smartphone imaging of GNAs with (intensity) sensitivity up to 137%/RIU. Using this platform, we realized the label-free detection of BSA molecules with concentration as low as 10 −8  M. We believe our work could pave the way for highly sensitive and compact point-of-care devices with cost-effective and high-throughput plasmonic chips.

Terahertz (THz) waves have revealed a great potential for use in various fields and for a wide range of challenging applications. High-performance detectors are, however, vital for exploitation of THz technology. Graphene plasmonic THz detectors have proven to be promising optoelectronic devices, but improving their performance is still necessary. In this work, an asymmetric-dual-grating-gate graphene-terahertz-field-effect-transistor with a graphite back-gate was fabricated and characterized under illumination of 0.3 THz radiation in the temperature range from 4.5 K up to the room temperature. The device was fabricated as a sub-THz detector using a heterostructure of h-BN/Graphene/h-BN/Graphite to make a transistor with a double asymmetric-grating-top-gate and a continuous graphite back-gate. By biasing the metallic top-gates and the graphite back-gate, abrupt n + n (or p + p ) or np (or pn ) junctions with different potential barriers are formed along the graphene layer leading to enhancement of the THz rectified signal by about an order of magnitude. The plasmonic rectification for graphene containing np junctions is interpreted as due to the plasmonic electron-hole ratchet mechanism, whereas, for graphene with n + n junctions, rectification is attributed to the differential plasmonic drag effect. This work shows a new way of responsivity enhancement and paves the way towards new record performances of graphene THz nano-photodetectors.

Borophene monolayer with its intrinsic metallic and anisotropic band structures exhibits extraordinary electronic, optical, and transport properties. Especially, the high density of Dirac electrons enables promising applications for building low-loss broadband SPP devices. However, a systematic characterization of the surface plasmon polariton (SPP) properties and hot carriers generated from the inevitable SPP decay in borophene has not been reported so far. Most importantly, the mechanism for SPP losses remains obscurely quantified. In this work, from a fully first-principles perspective, we explicitly evaluate the main loss effects of SPP in borophene, including the Drude resistance, phonon-assisted intraband and direct interband electronic transitions. With this knowledge, we further calculate the frequency- and polarization-dependent SPP response of borophene, and evaluate some typical application-dependent figure of merits of SPP. On the other hand, we evaluate the generation and transport properties of plasmon-driven hot carriers in borophene, involving energy- and momentum-dependent carrier lifetimes and mean free paths, which provide deeper insight toward the transport of hot carriers at the nanoscale. These results indicate that borophene has promising applications in next-generation low-loss optoelectronic devices and photocatalytic reactors.

All-dielectric nanoantennas, consisting of high refractive index semiconductor material, are drawing a great deal of attention in nanophotonics. Owing to their ability to manipulate efficiently the flow of light within sub-wavelength volumes, they have become the building blocks of a wide range of new photonic metamaterials and devices. The interaction of the antenna with light is largely governed by its size, geometry, and the symmetry of the multitude of optical cavity modes it supports. Already for simple antenna shapes, unraveling the full modal spectrum using conventional far-field techniques is nearly impossible due to the spatial and spectral overlap of the modes and their symmetry mismatch with incident radiation fields. This limitation can be circumvented by using localized excitation of the antenna. Here, we report on the experimental near-field probing of optical higher order cavity modes (CMs) and whispering gallery modes (WGMs) in amorphous silicon nanoantennas with simple, but fundamental, geometrical shapes of decreasing rotational symmetry: a disk, square, and triangle. Tapping into the near-field using an aperture type scanning near-field optical microscope (SNOM) opens a window on a rich variety of optical patterns resulting from the local excitation of antenna modes of different order with even and odd parity. Numerical analysis of the antenna and SNOM probe interaction shows how the near-field patterns reveal the node positions of – and allows us to distinguish between – cavity and whispering gallery modes. As such, this study contributes to a richer and deeper characterization of the structure of light in confined nanosystems, and their impact on the structuring of the light fields they generate.

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has been widely investigated and employed as a powerful optical analytical technique providing fingerprint vibrational information of molecules with high sensitivity and resolution. In addition to metallic nanostructure, dielectric micro-/nano-structures with extraordinary optical manipulation properties have demonstrated capability in enhanced Raman scattering with ultralow energy losses. Here we report a facile cascaded structure composed of a large microsphere (LMS) and a small microsphere array with Ag nanoparticles as a novel hybrid SERS substrate, for the first time. The cascaded microsphere-coupled SERS substrate provides a platform to increase the molecular concentration, boost the intensity of localized excitation light, and direct the far-field emission, for giant Raman enhancement. It demonstrates the maximum enhancement factor of Raman intensity greater than 10 8 for the limit of detection down to 10 −11  M of 4-nitrothiphenol molecules in aqueous solution. The present work inspires a novel strategy to fabricate cascaded dielectric/metallic micro-/nano-structures superior to traditional SERS substrates towards practical applications in cost-effective and ultrahigh-sensitive trace-detection.

Silica microlens arrays (MLAs) with multiple numerical-apertures (NAs) have high thermal and mechanical stability, and have potential application prospects in 3D display and rapid detection. However, it is still a challenge to rapidly fabricate silica MLAs with a larger range of NAs and how to obtain multiple NAs in the same aperture diameter. Here, a wet etching assisted spatially modulated femtosecond laser pulse fabricating technology is proposed. In this technology, Gaussian laser pulse is modulated in the axial direction to create a pulse with a large aspect ratio, which is used to modify the silica to obtain a longer modification distance than traditional technology. After that, a microlens with a larger NA can be obtained by etching, and the NA variable range can be up to 0.06–0.65, and even under the same aperture, the variable NA can range up to 0.45–0.65. In addition, a single focus is radially modulated into several focus with different axial lengths to achieve a single exposure fabricating of MLA with multiple NAs. In characterization of the image under a microscope, the multi-plane imaging characteristics of the MLA are revealed. The proposed technology offers great potential toward numerous applications, including microfluidic adaptive imaging and biomedical sensing.

Controlling the wavefront of light, especially on a subwavelength scale, is pivotal in modern optics. Metasurfaces present a unique platform for realizing flat lenses, called metalenses, with thicknesses on the order of the wavelength. Despite substantial effort, however, suppressing the chromatic aberrations over large operational bandwidths of metalenses still remains a challenge. Here, we develop a systematic design method enabling a simultaneous, polarization-insensitive control of the phase and the group delay of a light beam based on libraries of transmission-mode dielectric meta-elements. Mid-infrared achromatic metalenses are designed and theoretically analyzed to have diffraction-limited focal spots with vanishing chromatic aberrations in the operating wavelength range of 6–8.5 μm, while maintaining high focusing efficiencies of 41% on average. The proposed methodology, which can be used as a general design rule for all spectra, also provides a versatile design scheme for ultrashort pulse focusing and achromatic vortex-beam generation (orbital angular momentum), representing a major advance toward practical implementations of functional metalenses.

Sensitivity, selectivity, reliability, and measurement range of a sensor are vital parameters for its wide applications. Fast growing number of various detection systems seems to justify worldwide efforts to enhance one or some of the parameters. Therefore, as one of the possible solutions, multi-domain sensing schemes have been proposed. This means that the sensor is interrogated simultaneously in, e.g., optical and electrochemical domains. An opportunity to combine the domains within a single sensor is given by optically transparent and electrochemically active transparent conductive oxides (TCOs), such as indium tin oxide (ITO). This work aims to bring understanding of electro-optically modulated lossy-mode resonance (LMR) effect observed for ITO-coated optical fiber sensors. Experimental research supported by numerical modeling allowed for identification of the film properties responsible for performance in both domains, as well as interactions between them. It has been found that charge carrier density in the semiconducting ITO determines the efficiency of the electrochemical processes and the LMR properties. The carrier density boosts electrochemical activity but reduces capability of electro-optical modulation of the LMR. It has also been shown that the carrier density can be tuned by pressure during magnetron sputtering of ITO target. Thus, the pressure can be chosen as a parameter for optimization of electro-optical modulation of the LMR, as well as optical and electrochemical responses of the device, especially when it comes to label-free sensing and biosensing.

We demonstrate a double Rabi splitting totaling 348 meV in an Ag nanocavity embedding of methylene blue (MB) dye layer, which is ascribed to the equilibrium state of monomer and dimer coexistence in MB dye. At low dye concentration, the single-mode strong coupling between the monomer exciton in MB dye and the Ag nanocavity is observed. As the dye concentration is increased, three hybridized plexciton states are observed, indicating a double Rabi splitting (178 and 170 meV). Furthermore, the double anti-crossing behavior of the three hybrid states is observed by tuning the Ag nanocube size, which validates the multi-mode strong coupling regime. It shows clear evidence on the diverse exciton forms of dye molecules, both of which can interact with plasmonic nanocavity, effectively. Therefore, it provides a good candidate for realizing the multi-mode strong coupling.

The phase modulator is a key component in optical communications for its phase modulation functions. In this paper, we numerically demonstrate a variety of ultra-compact high-efficiency graphene phase modulators (GPMs) based on metal–nanoribbon integrated hybrid plasmonic waveguides in the near-infrared region. Benefiting from the good in-plane mode polarization matching and strong hybrid surface plasmon polariton and graphene interaction, the 20 μm-length GPM can achieve excellent phase modulation performance with a good phase and amplitude decoupling effect, a low insertion loss around 0.3 dB/μm, a high modulation efficiency with V π L π of 118.67 V μm at 1.55 μm, which is 1–3 orders improvement compared to the state-of-the-art graphene modulators. Furthermore, it has a wide modulation bandwidth of 67.96 GHz, a low energy consumption of 157.49 fJ/bit, and a wide operating wavelength ranging from 1.3 to 1.8 μm. By reducing the overlap width of the graphene–Al 2 O 3 –graphene capacitor, the modulation bandwidth and energy consumption of the modulator can be further improved to 370.36 GHz and 30.22 fJ/bit, respectively. These compact and energy-efficient GPMs may hold a key to various high-speed telecommunications, interconnects, and other graphene-based integrated photonics applications.