Ion beam synthesis of nanothermochromic diffraction gratings with giant switching contrast at telecom wavelengths

Abstract

Nanothermochromic diffraction gratings based on the metal-insulator transition of $\mathrm{V}{\mathrm{O}}_2$ are fabricated by site-selective ion beam implantation in a $\mathrm{Si}{\mathrm{O}}_2$ matrix. Gratings were defined either (i) directly by spatially selective ion beam synthesis or (ii) by site-selective deactivation of the phase transition by ion beam induced defects. The strongest increase of the diffracted light intensities was observed at a wavelength of 1550\,nm exceeding a factor of 20 for the selectively deactivated gratings. The observed pronounced thermal hysteresis extending down close to room temperature makes this system ideally suited for optical memory applications.

arXiv comment4 pages, 3 figures, 1 table - corrected Figure 3

References in corpus (4)

• Memory Metamaterials
• Evidence for a Structurally-driven Insulator-to-metal Transition in VO2: a View from the Ultrafast Timescale
• Strain engineering and one-dimensional organization of metal-insulator domains in single-crystal VO2 beams
• Metal-insulator transition in vanadium dioxide nanobeams: probing sub-domain properties of strongly correlated materials

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Site-selective ion beam synthesis and optical properties of individual CdSe nanocrystal quantum dots in a SiO2 matrix
• Stretchable optical diffraction grating from poly(acrylic acid)/polyethylene oxide stereocomplex
• VO2 Nanocrystals for Designer Phase-Change Metamaterials