Active control of surface phonon polariton resonance using a reconfigurable subwavelength-thin nanostructure

Surface phonon polaritons (SPhP) have been considered as an alternative to plasmon polaritons due to low optical power loss in mid-infrared. However, reconfigurable nanostructures are rarely achievable due to the lack of proper active materials suitable to polar dielectrics. We report numerical and experimental study of dynamic SPhP resonance control using a reconfigurable subwavelength nanostructure based on metal-insulator phase transition material, vanadium dioxide (VO2). We utilize a deeply subwavelength-scale VO2 nanocavity array on 6H-SiC polar dielectrics which introduce both localized resonances and propagating cavity modes for SPhP. Both SPhP resonance frequencies rely on optical index of nanocavity which can be tuned by metal-insulator phase transition of VO2.  We observe reflection spectrum under normal incidence of polarized light in Reststrahlen band of SiC (10-12 microns wavelength) and temperature dependent resonance shift by heating up to 400 K. This work was performed, in part, at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, an office of Science User Facility operated for the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science by Los Alamos National Laboratory (Contract 89233218CNA000001) and Sandia National Laboratories (Contract DE-NA-0003525)