Manipulating light scattering and optical confinement in vertically stacked Mie resonators

High index dielectric nanoresonators have gained prominence in nanophotonics due to lower losses compared to plasmonic systems and their ability to sustain both electric and magnetic resonances. The resonances can be engineered to create new types of optical states, such as bound-states in a continuum (BIC) and anapoles. In this work, we report on the optical properties of vertically stacked AlGaAs nanodisk Mie resonators. The nanodisks are designed to support an anapole state in the visible wavelength region (400–700 nm). The vertically stacked nanodisk resonators are fabricated from AlGaAs/GaAs multilayer samples with a fast and scalable patterning method using charged sphere colloidal lithography. Both measurements and finite difference time domain (FDTD) simulations of two and three stacked resonators show a sharp dip in the reflectance spectra at the anapole wavelength. For the 2 and 3 disk stacks the reflectance dip contrast at the anapole wavelength becomes very pronounced in the specular reflectance and is attributed to increased directional scattering due to an antenna effect. FDTD simulations show there is enhanced field confinement in all the disks at the anapole wavelength and the confined energy within the individual disks in the stack is at least 2–5 times greater compared to an isolated single nanodisk of the same dimension. Furthermore, the field confinement consistently increases with adding more disks in the stack. These vertically stacked AlGaAs nanodisk resonators can be a very exciting platform to engineer light matter interactions for linear and non-linear optical applications. The general principles of the fabrication method can be adapted to other wavelength ranges and can also be adapted for other III–V material combinations as well as for Si/SiO2.