As two-dimensional metamaterials, metasurfaces open up new avenues for designing static planar optics. However, the dynamic modulation of metasurfaces in the optical band is required for practical applications. The existing dynamic devices rarely utilized the polarization manipulation capability of metasurfaces. Here, we demonstrate an electrically tunable multifunctional metasurface in the visible range by integrating birefringent liquid crystals (LCs) with all-dielectric metasurfaces based on a novel packaging scheme. By combining the helicity-dependent geometric phase of the metasurface and the polarization control ability of LC molecules, continuous intensity tuning and switching of two helicity channels are realized. Electrically tunable single-channel switchable metaholograms, multicolor multiplexed metaholograms, and dynamic varifocal metalenses are designed to verify the concept. The exploration of polarization control in dynamic tuning can pave the way for dynamic metasurface devices in various applications, such as space light modulators, light detection and ranging systems, and holographic displays.
Diffractive photonic devices manipulate light via local and nonlocal optical modes. Local devices, such as metasurfaces, can shape a wavefront at multiple selected wavelengths, but inevitably modify light across the spectrum; nonlocal devices, such as grating filters, offer great frequency selectivity but limited spatial control. Here, we introduce a rational design paradigm using quasi-bound states in the continuum to realize multifunctional nonlocal devices: metasurfaces that produce narrowband spatially tailored wavefronts at multiple selected wavelengths and yet are otherwise transparent.
We show that, a metasurface composed of subwavelength metallic slit array embedded in an asymmetric environment can exhibit either extraordinary optical transmission (EOT) or extraordinary optical diffraction (EOD). By employing an analytical model expansion method and the diffraction order chart in k-vector space, we found that the resonance decaying pathway of the local slit cavity mode can be tuned to either 0th or -1st diffraction order by changing the parallel wavevector, which gives rise to enhanced 0th transmission (EOT) of the structure for small incident angles, and enhanced -1st diff…
Photonic devices rarely provide both elaborate spatial control and sharp spectral control over an incoming wavefront. In optical metasurfaces, for example, the localized modes of individual meta-units govern the wavefront shape over a broad bandwidth, while nonlocal lattice modes extended over many unit cells support high quality-factor resonances. Here, we experimentally demonstrate nonlocal dielectric metasurfaces in the near-infrared that offer both spatial and spectral control of light, realizing metalenses focusing light exclusively over a narrowband resonance while leaving off-resonant f…
University of Massachusetts Lowell（马萨诸塞大学洛厄尔分校）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；University of Central Florida（中佛罗里达大学）
Metasurfaces have enabled precise electromagnetic wave manipulation with strong potential to obtain unprecedented functionalities and multifunctional behavior in flat optical devices. These advantages in precision and functionality come at the cost of tremendous difficulty in finding individual meta-atom structures based on specific requirements (commonly formulated in terms of electromagnetic responses), which makes the design of multifunctional metasurfaces a key challenge in this field. In this paper, we present a Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) that can tackle this problem and genera…
Metasurfaces offer unconventional control of light to shape optical wavefronts within two-dimensional nanoscale structures. A nanostructured metallic thin film can establish an exclusive relationship between its surface structure and optical spectrum. The unique structural features, continuous metal coverage and smooth surface profile, can help obtain highly coherent plasmonic resonances that strongly depend on the structural parameters of nanostructured surfaces. It allows us to encode optical responses and information into a structural format on a variety of materials. We show experimentally…
Multifunctional Imaging with an Inverse-Designed Nonlocal Metasurface
ARC Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems（ARC变革性超光学系统卓越中心）；School of Physics, University of Melbourne（墨尔本大学物理学院）；Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Melbourne（墨尔本大学电气与电子工程系）；The Sir Peter MacCallum Dept of Oncology, University of Melbourne（墨尔本大学彼得·麦克卡伦爵士肿瘤学系）；Department of Pathology, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre（彼得·麦克卡伦癌症中心病理学部）；Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology, The University of Melbourne（墨尔本大学生物化学与药理学系）
Control of electromagnetic waves using engineered materials is very important in a wide range of applications, therefore there is always a continuous need for new and more efficient solutions. Known natural and artificial materials and surfaces provide a particular functionality in the frequency range they operate but cast a "shadow" and produce reflections at other frequencies. Here, we introduce a concept of multifunctional engineered materials that possess different predetermined functionalities at different frequencies. Such response can be accomplished by cascading metasurfaces (thin comp…
Integrating multiple functionalities into a single metasurface is becoming of great interest for future intelligent communication systems. While such devices have been extensively explored for reciprocal functionalities, in this work, we integrate a wide variety of nonreciprocal applications into a single platform. The proposed structure is based on spatiotemporally modulated impedance sheets supported by a grounded dielectric substrate. We show that, by engineering the excitation of evanescent modes, nonreciprocal interactions with impinging waves can be configured at will. We demonstrate a p…
The VO2-based THz metasurface optical switching threshold is reduced by more than five orders of magnitude to 0.32-0.4 W/cm2 due to the supply of a subthreshold electric current. Moreover, additional deposition of Au nanoparticles can further reduce the threshold by 30% due to plasmonic effects. The proposed designs and a combined approach to controlling the sub-THz/THz transmission by electric current and light make it possible to overcome the existing bottleneck in design of dynamically programmable THz mirror array based on metasurfaces.
Tunable optical devices, in particular, varifocal lenses, have important applications in various fields, including imaging and adaptive vision. Recent advances in metasurfaces, which control the wavefront of light using subwavelength-spaced nanostructures, open up new opportunities to replace bulk optical devices, with thin, flat, lightweight devices. We have demonstrated for the first time an electrically tunable flat lens, based on large area metasurfaces combined with a dielectric elastomer actuator having inline transparent electrodes, that is capable of simultaneously performing focal len…
We present a hybrid device platform for creating an electrically reconfigurable metasurface formed by the integration of plasmonic nanostructures with phase-change material germanium antimony telluride (GST). By changing the phase of GST from amorphous to crystalline through Joule heating, a large range of responses from the metasurface can be achieved. Furthermore, by using the intermediate phases of GST, the metasurface can interact with the incident light in both over-coupling and under-coupling regimes, leading to an inherently broadband response. Through a detailed investigation of the na…
Flat optics foresees a new era of ultra-compact optical devices, where metasurfaces serve as the foundation. Conventional designs of metasurfaces start with a certain structure as the prototype, followed by an extensive parametric sweep to accommodate the requirements of phase and amplitude of the emerging light. Regardless of how computation-consuming the process is, a predefined structure can hardly realize the independent control over the polarization, frequency, and spatial channels, which hinders the potential of metasurfaces to be multifunctional. Besides, achieving complicated and multi…
Based on an analytic approach, we present a theoretical review on the absorption, scattering, and extinction of both dipole scatterers and regular arrays composed of such scatterers i.e., metasurfaces. Besides offering a tutorial by outlining the maximum absorption limit for electrically/magnetically resonant dipole particles/metasurfaces, we give an educative analytical approach to their analysis. Moreover, we put forward the analysis of two known alternatives in providing perfect absorbers out of electrically and or magnetically resonant metasurfaces; one is based on the simultaneous presenc…
Light projection displays play an increasingly important role in our modern life. Core projection systems including liquid crystal displays and digital micromirror devices can impose spatial light modulation and actively shape light waves. Recently, the advent of metasurfaces has revolutionized design concepts in nanophotonics, enabling a new family of optical elements with exceptional degrees of freedom. Here, we demonstrate a light projection display technology based on optical metasurfaces, called digital metasurface device (DMSD). Each metasurface pixel in a DMSD is electrically reconfigur…
Metasurfaces consisting of an array of planar sub-wavelength structures have shown great potentials in controlling thermal infrared radiation, including intensity, coherence, and polarization. These capabilities together with the two-dimensional nature make thermal metasurfaces an ultracompact multifunctional platform for infrared light manipulation. Integrating the functionalities, such as amplitude, phase (spectrum and directionality), and polarization, on a single metasurface offers fascinating device responses. However, it remains a significant challenge to concurrently optimize the optica…
Active metasurfaces promise reconfigurable optics with drastically improved compactness, ruggedness, manufacturability, and functionality compared to their traditional bulk counterparts. Optical phase change materials (O-PCMs) offer an appealing material solution for active metasurface devices with their large index contrast and nonvolatile switching characteristics. Here we report what we believe to be the first electrically reconfigurable nonvolatile metasurfaces based on O-PCMs. The O-PCM alloy used in the devices, Ge2Sb2Se4Te1 (GSST), uniquely combines giant non-volatile index modulation c…
Achieving an electrically tunable phased array optical antenna surface has been a principal challenge in the field of metasurfaces. In this letter, we demonstrate a device platform for achieving reconfigurable control over the resonant wavelength of a subwavelength optical antenna through free-carrier injection. We engineer and grow, using molecular beam epitaxy, a heterostructure of In1-xAlxAs/InAs/AlyGa1-ySb layers designed to achieve large amplitude and phase modulation of light by maximizing the refractive index change in regions of resonant field enhancement The p-i-n layers are grown on …
In recent years, dielectric rod based metasurface lenses have been particularly investigated for their potential applications in replacing the traditional bulky lens with high efficiency. However, the isolated granular structure may lead to robustness and chromatic aberration concerns. In this work, a low refractive-index embedding medium was applied to solve the structural stability problem that also enables the device to be transferable to desired position or surface. Based on this, a compound metasurface lens composed of randomly interleaved frequency-selective zone sectors is proposed to b…
Switchable and active metasurfaces allow for the realization of beam steering, zoomable metalenses, or dynamic holography. To achieve this goal, one has to combine high-performance metasurfaces with switchable materials that exhibit high refractive index contrast and high switching speeds. In this work, we present an electrochemically switchable metasurface for beam steering where we use the conducting polymer poly(3,4-ethylene-dioxythiophene) (PEDOT) as an active material. We show beam diffraction with angles up to 10° and change of the intensities of the diffracted and primary beams employin…
All-dielectric optical metasurfaces can locally control the amplitude and phase of light at the nanoscale, enabling arbitrary wavefront shaping. However, lack of post-fabrication tunability has limited the true potential of metasurfaces for many applications. Here, we utilize a thin liquid crystal (LC) layer as a tunable medium surrounding the metasurface to achieve a phase-only spatial light modulator (SLM) with high reflection in the visible frequency, exhibiting an active and continuous resonance tuning with associated 2pi phase control and uncoupled amplitude. Dynamic wavefront shaping is …
This work continues the development of the raytracing method of [1] for computing the scattered fields from metasurfaces characterized by locally periodic reflection and transmission coefficients. In this work, instead of describing the metasurface in terms of scattering coefficients that depend on the incidence direction, its scattering behavior is characterized by the surface susceptibility tensors that appear in the generalized sheet transition conditions (GSTCs). As the latter quantities are constitutive parameters, they do not depend on the incident field and thus enable a more compact an…
Metasurfaces with local phase tuning by subwavelength elements promise unprecedented possibilities for ultra-thin and multifunctional optical devices, in which geometric phase design is widely used due to its resonant-free and large tolerance in fabrications. By arranging the orientations of anisotropic nano-antennas, the geometric phase-based metasurfaces can convert the incident spin light to its orthogonal state, and enable flexible wavefront engineering together with the function of a half-wave plate. Here, by incorporating the propagation phase, we realize another important optical device…
Metasurfaces with unparalleled controllability of light have shown great potential to revolutionize conventional optics. However, they mainly work with free-space light input, which makes it difficult for full on-chip integration. On the other hand, integrated photonics enables densely packed devices but has limited free-space light controllability. Here, we show that judiciously designed guided-wave-driven metasurfaces can mold guided waves into arbitrary free-space modes to achieve complex free-space functions, such as beam steering and focusing, with ultrasmall footprints and potentially no…
Realization of the anomalous refraction effects predicted by Huygens' metasurfaces (HMS) have required tedious and time-consuming trial-and-error numerical full-wave computations. It is shown herein that these requirements can be alleviated for transverse magnetic (TM) propagation by a periodic dielectric-based HMS consisting of an electrically thick array of cascaded Fabry-Pérot etalons. This "Fabry-Pérot HMS" (FP-HMS) is easily designed to mimic the local scattering coefficients of a standard zero-thickness HMS (ZT-HMS) which, according to homogenization theory, should result in the desired …
Resonant optical phased arrays are a promising way to reach fully reconfigurable metasurfaces in the optical and NIR regimes with low energy consumption, low footprint and high reliability. Continuously tunable resonant structures suffer from inherent drawbacks such as low phase range, amplitude-phase correlation or extreme sensitivity that makes precise control at the individual element level very challenging. In order to bypass these issues, we use 1-bit (binary) control for beam steering for an innovative nano-resonator antenna and explore the theoretical capabilities of such phased arrays.…
Omega bianisotropic metasurfaces (OBMS) provide wave-control capabilities not previously available with Huygens' metasurfaces (HMS). These enhanced capabilities derive from the additional degree of freedom provided by OBMS, and are based on analyses of zero-thickness surfaces with abstract surface impedance properties. However, the design of practical metasurfaces has proven tedious. Herein, we propose a novel, easily designed structure to realize OBMSs. Extending our previous work, we show that an asymmetrical cascade of two judiciously engineered Fabry-Perot (FP) etalons could form an OBMS m…
Despite recent advances in active metaoptics, wide dynamic range combined with high-speed reconfigurable solutions is still elusive. Phase-change materials (PCMs) offer a compelling platform for metasurface optical elements, owing to the large index contrast and fast yet stable phase transition properties. Here, we experimentally demonstrate an in situ electrically-driven reprogrammable metasurface by harnessing the unique properties of a phase-change chalcogenide alloy, Ge$_{2}$Sb$_{2}$Te$_{5}$ (GST), in order to realize fast, non-volatile, reversible, multilevel, and pronounced optical modul…
The advance in designing arrays of ultrathin two-dimensional optical nano-resonators, known as metasurfaces, is currently enabling a large variety of novel flat optical components. The remarkable control over the electromagnetic fields offered by this technology can be further extended to the active regime in order to manipulate the light characteristics in real-time. In this contribution, we couple the excitonic resonance of atomic thin MoS2 monolayers with gap-surface-plasmon (GSP) metasurfaces, and demonstrate selective enhancement of the exciton-plasmon polariton emissions. We further demo…
In nanoscale photonic devices, the demand for multifunctionality from metasurface 2D optics increases rapidly. To explore fine-tuning in the design metric, we reinvestigated the trapezoid shape copper metasurface with Finite-Difference Time-Domain simulation for efficiently using linearly polarized light for two different functionalities. From the plasmonic band structure, we see how the degree of asymmetry in geometry affects the efficient resonance coupling of the traveling plasmonic modes, along with different types of mode hybridization profiles related to the nanoantenna's geometric shape…
Metasurfaces consisting of electrically thin and densely packed planar arrays of subwavelength elements enable an unprecedented control of the impinging electromagnetic fields. Spatially modulated metasurfaces can efficiently tailor the spatial distribution of these fields with great flexibility. Similarly, time modulated metasurfaces can be successfully used to manipulate the frequency content and time variations of the impinging field. In this paper, we present time-modulated reflective metasurfaces that cause a frequency shift to the impinging radiation, thus realizing an artificial Doppler…
Metasurface-based color display and holography have greatly advanced the state of the art display technologies. To further enrich the metasurface functionalities, recently a lot of research endeavors have been made to combine these two display functions within a single device. However, so far such metasurfaces have remained static and lack tunability once the devices are fabricated. In this work, we demonstrate a dynamic dual-function metasurface device at visible frequencies. It allows for switching between dynamic holography and dynamic color display, taking advantage of the reversible phase…
Reducing a set of diverse bulk-optic-based optical components to a single ultrathin and compact element that enables the same complex functionality has become an emerging research area, propelling further integration and miniaturization in photonics. In this work, we establish a versatile metasurface platform based on gap-surface plasmon meta-atoms enabling efficient linear-polarization conversion along with the complete phase control over reflected fields. Capitalizing on the meta-atom design, multifunctional metamirrors involving linear-polarization conversion and focusing are experimentally…
