• Vaskivskyi, Igor
• Masciovecchio, Claudio
• Vaskivskyi, Yevhenii
• Mincigrucci, Riccardo
• Venturini, Rok
• De Angelis, Dario
• Mihailovic, Dragan
• Bencivenga, Filippo
• Paltanin, Ettore
• Fainozzi, Danny
• Pelli-Cresi, Jacopo-Stefano
• Mraz, Anze
• Foglia, Laura
• Jecl, Gregor

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>The absence of efficient light modulators for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and X-ray photons considerably limits their real-life application, particularly when even slight complexity of the beam patterns is required. Here we report on a novel approach to reversible imprinting of a holographic mask in an electronic Wigner crystal material with a sub-90-nm feature size. The structure is imprinted on a sub-picosecond timescale using EUV laser pulses, and acts as a high-efficiency diffraction grating that deflects EUV or soft X-ray light. The imprinted nanostructure is stable after the removal of the exciting beams at low temperatures, but can be easily erased by a single heating beam. Modelling shows that the efficiency of the device can exceed 1%, approaching state-of-the-art etched gratings, but with the benefit of being programmable and tunable over a large range of wavelengths. The observed effect is based on the rapid change of lattice constant upon transition between metastable electronically ordered phases in a layered transition metal dichalcogenide. The proposed approach is potentially useful for creating tunable light modulators in the EUV and soft X-ray spectral ranges.</jats:p>

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• layered
• phase transition
• ordered phase