Independent Amplitude and Phase Modulation in Active Transmissive Metasurfaces via Complex Permittivity Tuning

Abstract

Active metasurfaces are a promising platform for spatial light modulators (SLMs) in applications such as holography, beam shaping, and light detection and ranging (LiDAR), as they enable dynamic control over the amplitude and phase of light at subwavelength scales. Among these, transmissive metasurfaces offer a compact alternative to conventional SLMs, since they allow monolithic integration with chip-scale light sources. While independent amplitude and phase modulation have been previously demonstrated in active reflective metasurfaces, this important milestone has not been achieved in transmission due to the inherent challenges in designing active transmissive metasurfaces. Here, we theoretically demonstrate an active transmissive metasurface that enables independent amplitude and phase modulation in the mid-infrared. The proposed metasurface consists of high-Q cuboid germanium (Ge) Mie resonators integrated with graphene stripes. Utilizing the intraband and interband transitions of graphene, electrostatic gating enables modulation of the transmittance from near 0% to 5% at one spectral frequency and achieves 281° phase-only modulation at another frequency in the same device. To achieve both types of modulation at the same operating wavelength, we use the thermo-optic effect of Ge as a global tuning mechanism to spectrally align the resonant frequencies, enabling both transmittance and phase-only modulation at different base temperatures. The proposed dual-mechanism architecture achieves transmittance modulation efficiency of ~100% and 282° phase-only modulation. Finally, we demonstrate the efficacy of phase-only modulation by individually addressing each unit cell to realize a beam-steering device with relative diffraction efficiencies over 90%. Our individually addressable active metasurface opens a route toward compact, dynamically reconfigurable metaphotonic devices.