All-Solid-State Optical Phased Arrays of Mid-Infrared Based Graphene-Metal Hybrid Metasurfaces
Optical phased arrays (OPAs) are essential optical elements in applications that require the ability to manipulate the light-wavefront, such as beam focusing and light steering. To miniaturize the optical components, active metasurfaces, especially graphene metasurfaces, are used as competent alternatives. However, the metasurface cannot achieve a strong resonance effect, and the function of phase control only depends on the single-layer graphene in the mid-infrared band. Here we present a graphene-metal hybrid metasurface that can generate a specific phase or a continuous sweep in the range of a 275°-based single-layer graphene structure. A key feature of our design is that the phase adjustment mainly depends on the combination mechanism of resonance intensity and frequency modulation. An all-solid-state, electrically tunable, and reflective OPA is designed by applying the bias voltage to a different pixel metasurface. The simulation results show that the maximum deflection angle of the OPA can reach 42.716°, and the angular resolution can reach 0.62°. This design can be widely applied to mid-infrared imaging, optical sensing, and optical communication systems.