All dielectric transmissive structural multicolor pixel incorporating a resonant grating in hydrogenated amorphous silicon

All dielectric transmissive type polarization-tuned structural multicolor pixels (MCPs) are proposed and demonstrated based on a one-dimensional hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) grating integrated with a silicon nitride waveguide. Both bandpass and bandstop transmission filtering characteristics in the visible regime, centered at the same wavelength, have been achieved by tailoring the structural parameters including the duty ratio of the grating and the thickness of the dielectric waveguide. For the three manufactured MCPs, the transmission peak exceeds 70% for the transverse electric (TE) polarization and 90% for the transverse magnetic (TM) polarization as observed at the resonance and off-resonance wavelength, respectively. The polarization-switched transmissions are attributed to the guided mode resonance initiated by the interaction of the a-Si:H grating and the dielectric waveguide. A broad color palette covering the entire visible band was successfully realized from a suite of MCPs with varying grating pitches. The proposed structural color pixels are expected to facilitate the construction of dynamic displays, image sensors, optical data storage, security tags, and so forth.