Electro-optic polymer and silicon nitride hybrid spatial light modulators based on a metasurface

Spatial light modulators (SLMs) are important for various applications in photonics, such as near-infrared imaging, beam steering and optical communication. After decades of advances, current commercial devices are typically limited to kilohertz modulating speeds. To realize higher operating speeds, an electro-optic (EO) polymer and silicon nitride hybrid SLM has been demonstrated in this work. We utilize a specially designed metasurface to support a relatively high quality resonance and simultaneously confine most of the incident light in the active EO polymer layer. Combing with the high EO coefficient of the polymer, a clear modulation at 10 MHz with a driving voltage of Vp-p=+/- 10 V has been observed in the proof-of-concept device. Our first-generation device leaves vast room for further improvement and may open an attractive route towards compact SLM with an RF modulation higher than 100 GHz. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement