Phase-change metasurfaces for dynamic control of chiral quasi-bound states in the continuum

Abstract

Chiral quasi-bound states in the continuum (QBIC) offer novel mechanisms to achieve intrinsic chiroptical responses. However, current studies on chiral QBIC metasurfaces are restricted to the excitation of intrinsic chirality and fail to dynamically control its circular dichroism (CD) responses. Herein, we construct a phase-change metasurface based on paired Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) bars to demonstrate the dynamic control of the CD responses of chiral QBIC. The modified coupled mode theory (CMT) is proposed to evaluate the intrinsic chirality, and the predicted results are in good agreement with the finite–difference time-domain (FDTD) results. The maximal intrinsic chirality is associated with the spin-selected dipole mode, i.e., the coupled magnetic dipole (MD) QBIC mode for the left-handed circularly polarized (LCP) light and the decoupled electric dipole (ED) QBIC mode for the right-handed circularly polarized (RCP) light. By varying the volume fraction of GST, the location of chiral BIC can be tuned linearly, and the corresponding chiral response can be switched.