DMD Light Engine Design to Generate Reconfigurable Meta-Material Patterns in Functional Oxides

With the rapid development of materials, new and exciting research opportunities are emerging. One such material is vanadium dioxide (VO2) which exhibits interesting properties being able to reversibly change from an insulator at room temperature to a conductive material at ~67 oC temperature. This phase transition can be very sharp and has numerous applications, with one of the more exciting possibilities being able to realize metamaterials (MM), which are artificial materials capable of manipulating the wavefront of the light to realize frequency selective filters, polarizers, flat lenses, and even lenses with negative refractive index. The VO2 phase transition can be optically, electrically, or thermally triggered. The goal in this research is to combine a high-power laser source excitation (emitting at 980 nm wavelength) and a digital micromirror device to generate periodic patterns on the VO2 surface, with enough optical power to induce a phase transition at selected spatial regions, to realize reconfigurable two-dimensional MM-based filters at THz frequencies. In this work we provide details of the design, implementation, and testing of the lens, illumination, and digital micromirror system (the light engine) which can prospectively lead to the realization of reconfigurable THz-MM filters.