Deflection angle switching with a metasurface based on phase-change nanorods [Invited]

We propose the active metasurface using phase-change material Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST), which has two distinct phases so called amorphous and crystalline phases, for an ultrathin light path switching device. By arranging multiple anisotropic GST nanorods, the gradient metasurface, which has opposite directions of phase gradients at the two distinct phases of GST, is demonstrated theoretically and numerically. As a result, in the case of normal incidence of circularly polarized light at the wavelength of 1650 nm, the cross-polarized light deflects to -55.6 degrees at the amorphous phase and +55.6 degrees at the crystalline phase with the signal-to-noise ratio above 10 dB.