Electrically modulated plasmonic metasurfaces for light communication

Electrically modulated metasurfaces manipulate light fields but suffer from high operating voltages, low tuning sensitivity, and a reliance on telecommunication bands, limiting their applications in light communication (LC). Here, we demonstrate electrically modulated plasmonic metasurfaces that enable continuous and reversible wavelength modulation with a tuning sensitivity up to ~ 1 nm/V at a CMOS-compatible voltage below 5 V. These metasurfaces consist of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) immersed metal nanoparticle lattices and Au electrodes on transparent conductive oxide (TCO)/quartz substrate. Through simulations and experiments, we reveal that the wavelength shift is synergistically governed by the refractive index variation of the DMSO superstrate and the Seebeck effect of the TCO layer, which is further amplified by the lattice mode. Further, we propose two LC applications of these tunable metasurfaces: single-mode spectral shifting for image information transmission and multimode spectral shifts for a 1×3 encoder. The device paves the way for applying metasurfaces in optical communication and optoelectronic circuits.