Toward electrically tunable, lithography-free, ultra-thin color filters covering the whole visible spectrum

Abstract

The possibility of real-time tuning of optical devices has attracted a lot of interest over the last decade. At the same time, coming up with simple lithography-free structures has always been a challenge in the design of large-area compatible devices. In this work, we present the concept and the sample design of an electrically tunable, lithography-free, ultra-thin transmission-mode color filter, the spectrum of which continuously covers the whole visible region. A simple Metal-Insulator-Metal (MIM) cavity configuration is used. It is shown that using the electro-optic dielectric material of 4-dimethyl-amino-N-methyl-4-stilbazoliumtosylate (DAST) as the dielectric layer in this configuration enables efficient electrical tuning of the color filter. The total thickness of the structure is 120 nm, so it is ultra-thin. The output color gets tuned from violet to red by sweeping the applied voltage from −12 to +12 Volts (V). We present an in-detail optimization procedure along with a simple calculation method for the resonance wavelength of the MIM cavity that is based on circuit theory. Such power-efficient structures have a large variety of potential applications ranging from optical communication and switching to displays and color-tunable windows.