Phase-change Reconfigurable Optical WavEfront Synthesis System (PROWESS)

Hyun Jung Kim; Scott M Bartram; William M Humphreys; Cosmin Constantine-Popescu; Tian Gu; Juejun Hu; Matthew Julian; Steven Vitale

NASA NTRS · 20230000151

Phase-change Reconfigurable Optical WavEfront Synthesis System (PROWESS)

Hyun Jung Kim·Scott M Bartram·William M Humphreys·Cosmin Constantine-Popescu·Tian Gu·Juejun Hu·Matthew Julian·Steven Vitale

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Abstract

We report the design, fabrication, and testing of electrically tunable metasurface k-space filters based on the low-loss, high-contrast phase-change material GSST and a transparent Si electrode heating architecture. A 10x10 array of PCM elements integrated with Si heaters was fabricated via foundry processes, and used to actively control the crystallinity of a metasurface consisting of GSST nano antennae. By selectively varying the structural state of individual PCM elements, specific k-vectors of transmitted light can effectively be filtered out, resulting in improved imaging quality by reducing the scattered light that reaches a detector. Optimized doping profiles in the Si heaters allow for uniform, low power, reliable and repeatable switching of the GSST state. Compared to other k-space filters, this new architecture is completely transparent to the wavelength of interest and can be actively reconfigured in real time with high performance, low power consumption and a small footprint. The 10x10 array device is a proof-of-concept demonstration that can enable high-resolution arbitrary wavefront synthesis and correction in the future, with key applications in optical communications, beam steering, remote sensing, and adaptive optics.

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Hyun Jung Kim, Scott M Bartram, William M Humphreys, Cosmin Constantine-Popescu, Tian Gu, Juejun Hu, Matthew Julian, Steven Vitale. Phase-change Reconfigurable Optical WavEfront Synthesis System (PROWESS). https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20230000151

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