Experimental Demonstration of >230° Phase Modulation in Gate-Tunable Graphene-Gold Reconfigurable Mid-Infrared...

Metasurfaces offer significant potential to control far-field light propagation through the engineering of the amplitude, polarization, and phase at an interface. We report here the phase modulation of an electronically reconfigurable metasurface and demonstrate its utility for mid-infrared beam steering. Using a gate-tunable graphene-gold resonator geometry, we demonstrate highly tunable reflected phase at multiple wavelengths and show up to 237° phase modulation range at an operating wavelength of 8.50 μm. We observe a smooth monotonic modulation of phase with applied voltage from 0° to 206° at a wavelength of 8.70 μm. Based on these experimental data, we demonstrate with antenna array calculations an average beam steering efficiency of 23% for reflected light for angles up to 30° for this range of phases, confirming the suitability of this geometry for reconfigurable mid-infrared beam steering devices. By incorporating all nonidealities of the device into the antenna array calculations including absorption losses which could be mitigated, 1% absolute efficiency is achievable up to 30°.