On-chip beam steering through reprogrammable integrated coding metasurfaces

Coding metasurfaces have found many applications in free space optics, but have not been used for integrated photonic applications. This can partly be attributed to the lack of implements to usefully implement such a framework in practice. The advent of low-loss phase change materials such as Sb2S3 has changed this by enabling the implementation of reprogrammable integrated metasurfaces. This manuscript presents Sb2S3 based 1-bit and 2-bit coding metasurfaces that can potentially also be practically implemented. These metasurfaces can achieve functionalities such as beam focusing, beam splitting, and beam steering through the rearrangement of the material phase of Sb2S3. This can find potential applications in numerous fields including integrated photonic computational platforms.

Automated summary

Coding metasurfaces have been widely used in free space optics but not integrated photonic applications due to the lack of implementation methods. The use of low-loss phase change materials like Sb2S3 has made it possible to implement reprogrammable integrated metasurfaces. This paper presents Sb2S3 based 1-bit and 2-bit coding metasurfaces that can potentially be practically implemented and achieve functionalities such as beam focusing, beam splitting, and beam steering. This has potential applications in various fields including integrated photonic computational platforms.