arXiv subjects

Xiu Liu

Publications and source records attributed to Xiu Liu.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Reconfigurable Ultrafast Thermal Metamaterial Pixel Arrays by Dual-Gate Graphene Transistors

Thermal signatures represent ubiquitous infrared appearances of objects, carrying their unique spectral fingerprints. Despite extensive efforts to decipher and manipulate thermal-infrared signals, the ability to fully control them across spatial, temporal and spectral domains remains a significant challenge due to the slow speed, diffuse and broadband emitting nature of thermal emission in most materials. Here, we demonstrate a reconfigurable ultrafast thermal metamaterial pixel array that integrates active metasurfaces with dual-gate graphene transistors (Gr-FETs). The Gr-FETs with dual-gate control in each pixel achieve the heater-switch dual functionalities. As broadband transparent microheaters, Gr-FETs support the arbitrary design of integrated metasurfaces to achieve multi-color, narrowband infrared emission and operate at ultrafast modulation speeds. Concurrently as electrical switches, they enable a unified control scheme for pixel arrays of various sizes over large areas without compromising emission intensity. By decoupling the thermal generation and emission design processes, our approach provides an unprecedented degree of flexibility in programming thermal output across space, time, and wavelength. Our fabricated thermal pixel array experimentally demonstrated 26 alphabetical letters by applying progressive scanning, thus paving the way for practical realization of universal thermal signature controls for advanced thermal-infrared applications.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2024

Electrically Programmable Pixelated Graphene-Integrated Plasmonic Metasurfaces for Coherent Mid-Infrared Emission

Active metasurfaces have recently emerged as compact, lightweight, and efficient platforms for dynamic control of electromagnetic fields and optical responses. However, the complexities associated with their post-fabrication tunability significantly hinder their widespread applications, especially for the mid-infrared range due to material scarcity and design intricacy. Here, we experimentally demonstrate highly dynamic, pixelated modulations of coherent mid-infrared emission based on an electrically programmable plasmonic metasurface integrated with graphene field effect transistors (Gr-FETs). The ultrabroad infrared transparency of graphene allows for free-form control over plasmonic meta-atoms, thus achieving coherent mid-infrared states across a broad range of wavelengths and polarizations. The spatial temperature modulation generated by Gr-FETs is effectively synergized with the emissivity control by the localized surface plasmon polaritons from gold nanoantennas. This integrated temperature-emissivity modulation of metasurfaces is systematically extended to form a pixelated 2D array, envisioning new approaches toward scalable 2D electrical wiring for densely packed, independently controlled pixels.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2023

Brochosome-inspired binary metastructures for pixel-by-pixel thermal signature control

In nature, nano/micro-structured materials are adopted by various species to generate colors or achieve camouflage. Here, inspired by leafhopper-generated brochosomes, we design binary metastructures composed of pixel twins to achieve pixelated thermal signature control at the microscale. In the infrared range, the pixel twins exhibit distinct emissivities, creating thermal counterparts of '0-1' binary states for storing and displaying information. In the visible range, the engineered surface morphology of the pixel twins enables similar scattering behaviors, rendering the pixel twins visually indistinguishable, which achieves the camouflage of stored information. Compared to the previous work based on plasmonic holographic metasurfaces, the brochosome-like pixel twins are thermally driven, and their structure-enabled functions do not rely on permittivities of any specific material. The unique combination of visible camouflage and infrared display provides a systemic solution to the spatial control of thermal signatures, and has important implications for optical security, anticounterfeiting, and data encryption.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2022

Accurate Direct Measurements of Far-Field Thermal Infrared Emission and its Dynamics

Accurate direct measurements of far-field thermal infrared emission become increasingly important because conventional methods, relying on indirect assessments, such as reflectance/transmittance, are inaccurate or even unfeasible to characterize state-of-art devices with novel spectra, directionalities, and polarizations. The direct collection of the far-field emission from these tiny devices is also challenging because of their shrinking footprints and uncontrollable radiation noises from their surroundings. Here, we demonstrate a microscopic lock-in FTIR system that realizes significant improvement in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by combining a microscope and a lock-in amplifier with an FTIR. The lock-in FTIR is ultrasensitive, with a specific detectivity 10^6 times higher than commercial ones, to overcome the optical loss and background noise during the emission light collection. Based on an analytical model of the signal detection process, we also explore the combination of modulated Joule heating and global heating to fulfill the potential of our system for noise reduction. Our findings show that, compared to previous studies, more than 3 times lower temperatures are sufficient to generate a measurable signal. Under a heating temperature of around 125 °C, we can achieve an SNR of about 23.7, which is far above the true-signal-threshold (SNR of about 3.0). Furthermore, the system can respond fast enough (up to 175kHz) to record spectral-resolved dynamics of microdevices in the frequency domain. The measurable frequency range can be extended up to MHz or even GHz level by a high-speed circuit model. We believe the system together with the analytical signal processing can be beneficial for next-generation thermal infrared material and device exploration, boosting the applications in lighting, sensing, imaging, and energy harvesting on a small scale.

physics.ins-det↗

arXiv2022

Active control of thermal emission by graphene-nanowire coupled plasmonic metasurfaces

Metasurfaces, together with graphene plasmonics, have become prominent for the emissivity control in thermal engineering, both passively through changing the geometric parameters and packing density of the metasurfaces, and actively through graphene gating or doping. We demonstrate a graphene-nanowire coupled plasmonic metasurface utilizing the hybrid localized surface plasmon modes of the nanowire array and graphene. The nanowire array makes the hybrid surface plasmon mode localized, allowing a free-space excitation. The single layer graphene, via the gating between the underneath mirror and a top electrode, can actively tune the spectral emissivity by almost 90%. In addition, the hybrid plasmon mode provides an extra degree of freedom to modulate the p-polarized emissivity with a five-fold enhancement, especially for large emission angles.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2022

Electrically Driven Thermal Infrared Metasurface with Narrowband Emission

Metasurfaces consisting of an array of planar sub-wavelength structures have shown great potentials in controlling thermal infrared radiation, including intensity, coherence, and polarization. These capabilities together with the two-dimensional nature make thermal metasurfaces an ultracompact multifunctional platform for infrared light manipulation. Integrating the functionalities, such as amplitude, phase (spectrum and directionality), and polarization, on a single metasurface offers fascinating device responses. However, it remains a significant challenge to concurrently optimize the optical, electrical, and thermal responses of a thermal metasurface in a small footprint. In this work, we develop a center-contacted electrode line design for a thermal infrared metasurface based on a gold nanorod array, which allows local Joule heating to electrically excite the emission without undermining the localized surface plasmonic resonance. The narrowband emission of thermal metasurfaces and their robustness against temperature nonuniformity demonstrated in this work have important implications for the applications in infrared imaging, sensing, and energy harvesting.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2022

Design and analysis of electrothermal metasurfaces

Electrothermal metasurfaces have attracted extensive attention due to their ability to dynamically control thermal infrared radiation. Although previous studies were mainly focused on the metasurfaces with infinite unit cells, the finite-size effect can be a critical design factor for developing thermal metasurfaces with fast response and broad temperature uniformity in practice. Here, we study the thermal metasurfaces consisting of gold nanorods with a finite array size, which, with only several periods, can achieve a resonance close to that of the infinite case. More importantly, such a small footprint due to the finite array size results in the response time down to a nanosecond level. Furthermore, the number of the unit cells in the direction perpendicular to the axis of the nanorods is found to be insensitive to the resonance and response time, thus providing a tunability in aspect ratio that can boost the temperature uniformity in the sub-Kelvin level.

physics.optics↗