Arsenic selenide dielectric metasurfaces

Abstract

Arsenic triselenide (As2Se3) is of interest for use in dielectric metasurfaces for several reasons: It has a high linear refractive index, n=2.8, enabling high index contrast with its surrounding medium; it has an exceptionally high optical nonlinearity (n2 < 900 × that of silica) making it a good candidate for nonlinear metasurfaces; and its band gap of 1.8 eV and wide transmission window, spanning from approximately 1.5-14 μm, make it useful for applications in the shortwave infrared into the long-wave infrared. We discuss recent results in which we showed that unpassivated As2Se3 films degrade significantly under ambient conditions in the presence of light. We discuss the mechanism of this degradation and show that deposition of a thin (~10 nm) Al2O3 passivation layer, deposited via atomic layer deposition, together with preventing exposure to below-band gap light inhibits degradation. Finally, we fabricate initial As2Se3-based dielectric metasurfaces by writing features via a laser direct write system. For mid-wave to long-wave infrared applications, features with relevant sizes can be written using this technique. We measure resonances for these structures and compare to theoretical results.