Title
A Nonvolatile Phase-Change Metamaterial Color Display
Author
Santiago García‐Cuevas Carrillo, Liam Trimby, Yat‐Yin Au, V. Karthik Nagareddy, Gerardo Rodriguez‐Hernandez, Peiman Hosseini, Carlos Ríos, Harish Bhaskaran, C. David Wright
Year
2019
Journal
Advanced Optical Materials
Abstract
Chalcogenide phase‐change materials, which exhibit a marked difference in their electrical and optical properties when in their amorphous and crystalline phases and can be switched between these phases quickly and repeatedly, are traditionally exploited to deliver nonvolatile data storage in the form of rewritable optical disks and electrical phase‐change memories. However, exciting new potential applications are now emerging in areas such as integrated phase‐change photonics, phase‐change optical metamaterials/metasurfaces, and optoelectronic displays. Here, ideas from these last two fields are fused together to deliver a novel concept, namely a switchable phase‐change metamaterial/metasurface resonant absorber having nonvolatile color generating capabilities. With the phase‐change layer, here GeTe, in the crystalline phase, the resonant absorber can be tuned to selectively absorb the red, green, and blue spectral bands of the visible spectrum, so generating vivid cyan, magenta, and yellow pixels. When the phase‐change layer is switched into the amorphous phase, the resonant absorption is suppressed and a flat, pseudowhite reflectance results. Thus, a route to the potential development is opened‐up of nonvolatile, phase‐change metamaterial color displays and color electronic signage.
Instrument
MSV-5300
Keywords
Reflectance, Absoprtion, Color analysis, Materials