Research Projects

Active control on the optical metasurfaces by liquid crystals (LCs) at the subwavelength scale, have the potential to revolutionize many emerging technologies in the challenging fields of optoelectronics, nanophotonics, quantum optics, active plasmonics and flat meta optics. The LCs may also be extremely promising candidate for active tuning of the various metasurface resonance modes including surface lattice resonances (SLRs) due to their unique properties such as anisotropic shape, broad optical birefringence (higher than available natural materials) over the entire VIS-IR-THz-microwave spectrum, ability to be efficiently controlled by external electric or magnetic fields, light and temperature, low power consumption, low operating voltage and also capable to control the polarization of incoming light. Overall, recent demonstrations show that merging metasurfaces and LC active materials opens the door to construct new types of electrically and all-optically controlled active metadevices. The main objective of the proposed research is to combine the spectral narrowing achievable by the nonlocality of SLRs with the polarization-dependent response of chromatic plasmonic polarizers in order to develop new types of switchable narrowband spectral filters adjusted to the visible regime that can be switched by either electric fields or all-optically.