Reconfigurable meta-devices platform based on stimuli-responsive materials

Metasurfaces have been playing their vital role in many fields related to light because they are capable of manipulating its characteristics. Most of the metasurfaces are based on conventional materials so they are unifunctional in the range of interest of electromagnetic spectrum. With the passage of time, the phase change materials (PCMs) have been explored which have a peculiar tendency to make multifunctional metasurface designs by tuning process. The tuning opens avenues for the drastic engineering of the optical parameters of PCMs to realize controllable devices. The stimuli for such materials are optical, electrical, thermal or mechanical activations. These PCMs based metasurfaces find numerous applications in rewritable optical volatile and nonvolatile data storage, sensors, active color displays and tunable optical switches. These materials possess high endurance and scalability, high switching speed, data retentivity, low power consumption, and reversible phase-transition in bi-stable states i.e. amorphous and crystalline forms. The Germanium antimony-tellurium ((GeTe)m(Sb2Te3)n) in its various combinations, Vanadium dioxide (VO2), Gallium-telluride (GeTe), Indium antimonide (InSb) are PCMs to name a few. In this work, we have outlined the recent studies on different PCMs in order to explore their associated benefits for a particular application in reconfigurable, integrable, active nano-photonic metadevices. The PCMs-based structures are ideal candidates for development of next-generation, light-weight and fabrication friendly optoelectronics components to meet real-time applications based on solid-state devices. In this study, the challenges and limitations are also being highlighted related to the designs based on PCMs.