Ultrathin BIC metasurfaces based on ultralow-loss Sb2Se3 phase-change material

Abstract: Phase-change materials (PCMs) are increasingly recognised as promising platforms for tunable photonic devices due to their ability to modulate optical properties through solid-state phase transitions. Ultrathin and low-loss PCMs are highly valued for their fast and more effective phase transitions and applications in reconfigurable photonic chips, metasurfaces, optical modulators, sensors, photonic memories, and neuromorphic computing. However, conventional PCMs such as GST, GSST, VO2, and In3SbTe2, despite optimisation for tunable meta-optics, suffer from high intrinsic losses in the near-infrared (NIR) region, limiting their potential for high quality factor (Q-factor) resonant metasurfaces. Here we present the design and fabrication of tunable bound states in the continuum (BIC) metasurfaces using the ultralow-loss PCM Sb2Se3. Our BIC metasurfaces, only 25 nm thick, achieve high modulation depth and broad resonance tuning in the NIR with high Q-factors up to 130, without the need for additional materials. Experimentally, we employ these BIC metasurfaces to modulate photoluminescence in rare earth-doped upconversion nanoparticles, reducing the excitation power for multiphoton photoluminescence and enabling emission polarisation manipulation. This work offers a promising platform for developing active resonant metasurfaces in the NIR region, with broad applications including super resolution imaging, optical modulation, ultrafast switches, harmonic generation, colour filtering, and optical sensing.