Thermal near-field tuning of silicon Mie nanoparticles

Tunable high-refractive-index nanostructures are highly desired for realizing photonic devices with a compact footprint. By harnessing the large thermo-optic effect in silicon, we show reversible and wide thermal tuning of both the far-A nd near-fields of Mie resonances in isolated silicon nanospheres in the visible range.

We perform in situ heating in a transmission electron microscope and electron energy-loss spectroscopy to show that the Mie resonances exhibit large spectral shifts upon heating. We leverage the spectral shifts to demonstrate near-field tuning between different Mie resonances. By combining electron energy-loss spectroscopy with energy-dispersive X-ray analysis, we show a reversible and stable operation of single silicon nanospheres up to a temperature of 1073 K.

Our results demonstrate that thermal actuation offers dynamic near-field tuning of Mie resonances, which may open up applications in tunable nonlinear optics, Raman scattering, and light emission.