Figure 1. Illustrations highlighting advantages of phase-change nanomodulator.

(a), Sketch based on experimental results of references 16 and 17 with modulation of the optical properties of an isolated vanadium dioxide (VO₂) nanostructure by thermally triggering its phase transition from insulating (white) to metallic (magenta) state. When the VO₂ nanostructure becomes metallic, an intrinsic localized surface plasmon is formed in the near-IR region, albeit strongly damped. (b), Metallic nanostructure on PC-VO₂ film with a strongly damped plasmon resonance of Au due strong interaction with the active substrate and a strong absorption in the visible due to the film geometry, based on Suh et al. work⁴¹. (c), Modulation of the gold plasmonic resonance with a VO₂ nanostructure that modifies only the near-field nanoenvironment of the metallic nanostructure (present work). (d), Combining these two nanostructures as shown in (c) provides reconfigurability: (I) using the size-dependent properties of VO₂ for bistable switches (II) ultrafast plasmonic switch underlined by the ultrafast switching of the intrinsic PC-VO₂, (III) polarization selectively activating the modulation, (IV) Tuning the operating wavelength of the hybrid nanomodulator by varying the plasmonic nanostructure size and shape.