Nanoelectromechanical Tuning of High-Q Slot Metasurfaces

Nanoelectromechanical devices have been used widely in many applications across photonics, electronics, and acoustics. Their incorporation into metasurface systems could be beneficial in designing new types of active photonic devices. Here, we propose a design of active metasurfaces using a nanoelectromechanical system (NEMS) composed of silicon bars which operates under CMOS-level voltage and achieves phase modulation with wavelength-scale pixel pitch. By introducing a perturbation to the slot mode propagating between the silicon bars, the device operates in a high-Q regime, making the optical mode highly sensitive to mechanical movement. An over 12 dB reflection modulation is observed by full-wave simulation, and over 10% is achieved in the proof-of-concept experiment under CMOS-level voltage. We also simulate a device with 1.8π phase response using a bottom gold mirror. Based on this device, a 3-pixel optical beam deflector is shown to have 75% diffraction efficiency.