Congratulations to PGR Santiago Garcia-Cuevas Carrillo, who is the lead author on ‘A Nonvolatile Phase‐Change Metamaterial Color Display’, recently published in Advanced Optical Materials. Co-authors include fourth year PGR Liam Trimby and Prof. C. David Wright.
Abstract
Chalcogenide phase‐change materials, which exhibit a marked difference in their electrical and optical properties when in their amorphous and crystalline phases and can be switched between these phases quickly and repeatedly, are traditionally exploited to deliver nonvolatile data storage in the form of rewritable optical disks and electrical phase‐change memories. However, exciting new potential applications are now emerging in areas such as integrated phase‐change photonics, phase‐change optical metamaterials/metasurfaces, and optoelectronic displays. Here, ideas from these last two fields are fused together to deliver a novel concept, namely a switchable phase‐change metamaterial/metasurface resonant absorber having nonvolatile color generating capabilities. With the phase‐change layer, here GeTe, in the crystalline phase, the resonant absorber can be tuned to selectively absorb the red, green, and blue spectral bands of the visible spectrum, so generating vivid cyan, magenta, and yellow pixels. When the phase‐change layer is switched into the amorphous phase, the resonant absorption is suppressed and a flat, pseudowhite reflectance results. Thus, a route to the potential development is opened‐up of nonvolatile, phase‐change metamaterial color displays and color electronic signage.
Santiago passed his viva in May this yearpassed his viva in May this yearpassed his viva in May this year. His previous publications include ‘Reconfigurable phase-change meta-absorbers with on-demand quality factor control’ and ‘Design of practicable phase-change metadevices for near-infrared absorber and modulator applications, both published in Optics Express.