Visible Metamaterial Using a Lithium Niobate Nanoring Structure for Stretchable Color Sensing Application

All-dielectric metamaterials present the capability togeneratehigh quality structure colors with outstanding color purity and filteringefficiency. In this study, a visible metamaterial composed of a lithiumniobate (LiNbO3) nanoring (LNR) structure on polydimethylsiloxane(PDMS) substrate is proposed. By carefully optimizing geometry configurations,a strong magnetic dipole (MD) resonance is stimulated and other multipoleresonances are effectively suppressed with the assistance of surfacelattice resonance, and then single reflection peaks are generatedwith high efficiencies up to 99% and narrow bandwidths smaller than9 nm. Moreover, benefiting from the stretchable property of the PDMSsubstrate, LNR metamaterial has the potential to be actively tunedby mechanically changing the period of unit cells and then realizingthe reflected color changes. Meanwhile, LNR metamaterial is also sensitiveto the change of the ambient environment; the figure of merit canbe up to 311.11 RIU-1. It indicates LNR metamaterialpossesses potentials in stretchable electronics, color generating,light fidelity (LiFi) filtering, and biochemical sensing applications.

Automated summary

This study proposes a visible metamaterial composed of a lithium niobate (LiNbO3) nanoring (LNR) structure on a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate. By optimizing the geometry configurations, a strong magnetic dipole (MD) resonance is stimulated and other multipole resonances are suppressed, generating single reflection peaks with high efficiency and narrow bandwidths. The stretchable nature of the PDMS substrate enables the LNR metamaterial to be mechanically tuned and responsive to changes in the ambient environment, making it suitable for stretchable electronics, color generation, LiFi filtering, and biochemical sensing applications.