Design and analysis of electrothermal metasurfaces

Abstract

Electrothermal metasurfaces have garnered considerable attention owing to their ability to dynamically control thermal infrared radiation. Although previous studies were mainly focused on metasurfaces with infinite unit cells, in practice, the finite-size effect can be a critical design factor for developing thermal metasurfaces with fast response and broad temperature uniformity. Here, we study the thermal metasurfaces consisting of gold nanorods with a finite array size, which can achieve a resonance close to that of the infinite case with only several periods. More importantly, such a small footprint due to the finite array size yields response time down to a nanosecond level. Furthermore, the number of the unit cells in the direction perpendicular to the axis of nanorods is found to be insensitive to the resonance and response time; thus, providing a tunable aspect ratio that can boost the temperature uniformity in the sub-Kelvin level.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

modulated thermal infrared radiation / metasurface / nanosecond response time / sub-Kelvin temperature uniformity / finite size / aspect ratio

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Acknowledgments

This study was primarily supported by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (Grant No. HDTRA1-19-1-0028) and partially funded by the National Science Foundation (Grant No. CBET-1931964). X. L., Z. L., and Z. W. contributed equally; X. L. and Z. L. identified the problem; Z. L. and X. L. conducted the optical simulations; Z. W. and X. L. conducted the thermal simulations; X. L. and Z. L. prepared the manuscript with the input from Z. W. and H. S. Y.; S. S. supervised the research. All authors have approved the final version of the manuscript. The authors declare no competing financial interest.

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