Conventional optical elements are bulky and limited to specific functionalities, contradicting the increasing demand of miniaturization and multi-functionalities. Optical metasurfaces enable tailoring light-matter interaction at will, especially important for the infrared spectral range which lacks commercially available beam-shaping elements. While the fabrication of those metasurfaces usually requires cumbersome techniques, direct laser writing promises a simple and convenient alternative. Here, we exploit the non-volatile laser-induced insulator-to-metal transition of the plasmonic phase-change material In3SbTe2 (IST) for optical programming of large-area metasurfaces for infrared beam-shaping. We tailor the geometric phase of metasurfaces with rotated crystalline IST rod antennas to achieve beam steering, lensing, and beams carrying orbital angular momenta. Finally, we investigate multi-functional and cascaded metasurfaces exploiting enlarged holography, and design a single metasurface creating two different holograms along the optical axis. Our approach facilitates fabrication of large-area metasurfaces within hours, enabling rapid-prototyping of customized infrared meta-optics for sensing, imaging and quantum information.
A new configuration for metasurface construction is presented to achieve multi-functional capabilities including perfect absorption, bio/chem sensing, and surface-mode lasing. The reciprocal plasmonic metasurfaces discussed here are composed of two plasmonic surfaces of reciprocal geometries separated by a dielectric spacer. Compared to conventional metasurfaces this simple geometry exhibits an enhanced optical performance. The discussed reciprocal metasurface design further enables effective structural optimization and allows for a simple and scalable fabrication. The physical principle and p…
Nonlinear metasurfaces offer new paradigm for boosting optical effect beyond limitations of conventional materials. In this work, we present an alternative way to produce pronounced third-harmonic generation (THG) based on nonlinear field resonances rather than linear field enhancement, which is a typical strategy for achieving strong nonlinear response. By designing and studying a nonlinear plasmonic-graphene metasurface at terahertz regime with hybrid guided modes and bound states in the continuum modes, it is found that a THG with a narrow bandwidth can be observed, thanks to the strong res…
Plasmonic nanostructures with large local field enhancement have been extensively investigated for sensing applications. However, the quality factor and thus the sensing figure of merit are limited due to relatively high ohmic loss. Here we propose a novel plasmonic sensor with ultrahigh figure of merit based on super-narrow Rayleigh anomaly (RA) in a mirror-backed dielectric metasurface. Simulation results show that the RA in such a metasurface can have a super-high quality factor of 16000 in the visible regime, which is an order of magnitude larger than the highest value of reported plasmoni…
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…
Laser printing with a spatial light modulator (SLM) has several advantages over conventional raster-writing and dot-matrix display (DMD) writing: multiple pixel exposure, high power endurance and existing software for computer generated holograms (CGH). We present a technique for the design and manufacturing of plasmonic metasurfaces based on ultrafast laser printing with an SLM. As a proof of principle, we have used this technique to laser print a plasmonic metalens as well as high resolution plasmonic color decorations. The high throughput holographic resonant laser printing (HRLP) approach …
Retroreflectors that can accurately redirect the incident wave in free space back along its original channel provide unprecedented opportunities for light manipulation in wireless communication. However, to the best of our knowledge, the existing methods of designing retroreflectors suffer from either the bulky size, narrow angular bandwidth, or time-consuming post-processing. Here, a scheme of designing ultrathin and all-angle retroreflectors based on hyperbolic plasmonic metasurfaces is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The physical mechanism underlying this scheme is the high-effici…
Metasurfaces, and in particular those containing plasmonic-based metallic elements, constitute a particularly attractive set of materials. By means of modern nanolithographic fabrication techniques, flat, ultrathin optical elements may be constructed. However, in spite of their strong optical nonlinearities, plasmonic metasurfaces have so far been investigated mostly in the linear regime. Here we introduce full nonlinear phase control over plasmonic elements in metasurfaces. We show that for nonlinear interactions in a phase-gradient nonlinear metasurface a new anomalous nonlinear phase matchi…
Acoustic vibrations at the nanoscale (GHz-THz frequencies) and their interactions with electrons, photons and other excitations are the heart of an emerging field in physics: nanophononics. The design of ultrahigh frequency acoustic-phonon transducers, with tunable frequency, and easy to integrate in complex systems is still an open and challenging problem for the development of acoustic nanoscopies and phonon lasers. Here we show how an optimized plasmonic metasurface can act as a high-frequency phonon transducer. We report pump-probe experiments in metasurfaces composed of an array of gold n…
A hybrid plasmonic-dielectric metasurface is proposed in order to manipulate beam propagation in desired manners. The metasurface is composed of patterned hybrid graphene-silicon nano-disks deposited on a low-index substrate, namely silica. It is shown that the proposed hybrid metasurface simultaneously benefits from the advantages of graphene-based metasurfaces and dielectric ones. Specially, we show that the proposed hybrid metasurface not only provides reconfigurability, just like previously proposed graphene-based metasurfaces, but also similar to dielectric metasurfaces it is low loss and…
Multiresonant metasurfaces could enable many applications in filtering, sensing and nonlinear optics. However, developing a metasurface with more than one high-quality-factor or high-Q resonance at designated resonant wavelengths is challenging. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a plasmonic metasurface exhibiting different, narrow surface lattice resonances by exploiting the polarization degree of freedom where different lattice modes propagate along different dimensions of the lattice. The surface consists of aluminum nanostructures in a rectangular periodic lattice. The resulting surface l…
The emerging applications of silicon photonics in free space, such as LiDARs and quantum photonics, urge versatile emission shaping beyond the capabilities of conventional grating couplers. A platform that offers arbitrary shaping of free-space emission while maintaining the CMOS compatibility and monolithic integration is in pressing need. Here we demonstrate a platform that integrates metasurfaces monolithically on silicon photonic integrated circuits. The metasurfaces consist of amorphous silicon nanopillars evanescently coupled to silicon waveguides. We demonstrate experimentally diffracti…
Classical emulation of a ubiquitous quantum mechanical phenomenon of double-continuum Fano (DCF) interference using metasurfaces is experimentally realized by engineering the near-field interaction between two bright and one dark plasmonic modes. The competition between the bright modes, with one of them effectively suppressing the Fano interference for the orthogonal light polarization, is discovered and explained by the analytic theory of the plasmonic DCF interference, which is further applied to predicting the circularly dichroic optical field concentration by plasmonic metasurfaces.
Parity-Time (PT) symmetric optical structures exhibit several unique and interesting characteristics with the most popular being exceptional points. While the emerging concept of PT-symmetry has been extensively investigated in bulky photonic designs, its exotic functionalities in nanophotonic non-Hermitian plasmonic systems still remain relatively unexplored. Towards this goal, in this work we analyze the unusual properties of a plasmonic Huygens metasurface composed of an array of active metal-dielectric core-shell nanoparticles. By calculating the reflection and transmission coefficients of…
Plasmonic metasurfaces based on the extraordinary optical transmission effect (EOT) can be designed to efficiently transmit specific spectral bands from the visible to the far-infrared regimes, offering numerous applications in im-portant technological fields such as compact multispectral imaging, biological and chemical sensing, or color displays. However, due to their subwavelength nature, EOT metasurfaces are nowadays fabricated with nano- and micro-lithographic techniques, requiring many processing steps and carried out in expensive cleanroom environments. In this work, we propose and expe…
Motivated by the recent renewed interest in compact analog computing using light and metasurfaces (Silva, A. et al., Science 2014, 343, 160-163), we suggest a practical approach to its realization that involves reflective metasurfaces consisting of arrayed gold nanobricks atop a subwavelength-thin dielectric spacer and optically-thick gold film, a configuration that supports gap-surface plasmon resonances. Using well established numerical routines, we demonstrate that these metasurfaces enable independent control of the light phase and amplitude, and design differentiator and integrator metasu…
Dynamically reconfigurable metasurfaces promise compact and lightweight spatial light modulation for many applications, including LiDAR, AR/VR, and LiFi systems. Here, we design and computationally investigate high quality factor silicon-on-lithium niobate metasurfaces with electrically-driven, independent control of its constituent nanobars for full phase tunability with high tuning efficiency. Free-space light couples to guided modes within each nanobar via periodic perturbations, generating quality factors exceeding 30,000, while maintaining bar spacing <$λ$/1.5. We achieve nearly 2$π$ phas…
Metasurfaces offer great potential to control near- and far-fields through engineering of optical properties of elementary cells or meta-atoms. Such perspective opens a route to efficient manipulation of the optical signals both at nanoscale and in photonics applications. In this paper we show that by using an effective surface conductivity tensor it is possible to unambigiously describe optical properties of an anisotropic metasurface in the far- and near-field regimes. We begin with retrieving the effective surface conductivity tensor from the comparative analysis of experimental and numeric…
Plasmonic nanostructures hold promise for the realization of ultra-thin sub-wavelength devices, reducing power operating thresholds and enabling nonlinear optical functionality in metasurfaces. However, this promise is substantially undercut by absorption introduced by resistive losses, causing the metasurface community to turn away from plasmonics in favour of alternative material platforms (e.g., dielectrics) that provide weaker field enhancement, but more tolerable losses. Here, we report a plasmonic metasurface with a quality-factor (Q-factor) of 2340 in the telecommunication C band by exp…
A switchable metasurface composed of plasmonic split ring resonators and a dye-doped liquid crystal is developed. The transmission of the metasurface in the infrared spectral range can be changed by illuminating the dye-doped liquid crystal with light in the visible spectral range. The effect is particularly efficient in the case of hybrid alignment of the liquid crystal, i. e. alignment of the director perpendicular to the surface on one substrate and parallel alignment on the counter substrate. This all-optical switching effect can be attributed to the behavior described in earlier works as …
Dielectric metasurfaces provide a unique platform for efficient harmonic generation and optical wavefront manipulation at the nanoscale. Tailoring phase and amplitude of a nonlinearly generated wave with a high emission efficiency using resonance-based metasurfaces is a challenging task which often requires state-of-the-art numerical methods. Here, we propose a simple yet effective approach combining a sampling method with a Monte Carlo approach to design the third-harmonic wavefront generated by all-dielectric metasurfaces composed of elliptical silicon nanodisks. Using this approach, we demo…
Herein, we investigate the optical properties of quantum plasmonic metasurfaces composed of metallic nano-objects with subnanometer gaps according to the time-dependent density functional theory, a fully quantum mechanical approach. When the quantum and classical descriptions are compared, the transmission, reflection, and absorption rates of the metasurface exhibit substantial differences at shorter gap distances. The differences are caused by electron transport through the gaps of the nano-objects. The electron transport has profound influences for gap distances less-than or approximately 0.…
We report here and experimentally demonstrate an actively controlled gatetunable plasmonic metasurface operating in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum, where strikingly the operating voltages for reflectance modulation are much less than 1V. The electrically tunable metasurface consists of inverse dolmen structures (iDolmen) patterned on silver and chromium on a quartz substrate and subsequently covered with a 5 nm thin layer of Al2O3 followed by a 110 nm indium tin oxide (ITO) layer, which acts as a transparent electrode. Our designed structures show up to 78 percent change in…
Controlling the phase and amplitude of light emitted by the elements (i.e., pixels) of an optical phased array is of paramount importance to realizing dynamic beam steering for LIDAR applications. In this paper, we propose a plasmonic pixel composed of a metallic nanoantenna covered by a thin oxide layer, and a conductive oxide, e.g., ITO, for use in a reflectarray metasurface. By considering voltage biasing of the nanoantenna via metallic connectors, and exploiting the carrier refraction effect in the metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitor in the accumulation and depletion regions, our simulatio…
The nonlinear process of second harmonic generation (SHG) in monolayer (1L) transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD), like $WS_2$, strongly depends on the polarization state of the excitation light. Combining plasmonic nanostructures with $1L-WS_2$ by transferring it onto a plasmonic nanoantenna array, a hybrid metasurface is realized impacting the polarization dependency of its SHG. Here, we investigate how plasmonic dipole resonances affect the process of SHG in plasmonic-TMD hybrid metasurfaces by nonlinear spectroscopy. We show, that the polarization dependency is affected by the lattice str…
We introduce chip-integrated visible light communication-band modulators based on niobium (Nb) metallic plasmonic nano-antenna arrays. Our plasmonic nano-devices provide strong sensitivity to the polarization of the incident visible light and the geometrical parameters of their subwavelength nanoscale building blocks. Moreover, they offer optical modulation properties with modulation depth MD = 60% at resonant wavelength lambda= 716 nm, at room temperature. By engineering the photo response of the Nb nano-device arrays, we observe a maximum extinction A(lambda)= 1- R(lambda}) = 95 % at resonan…
Plasmonic metasurfaces enable simultaneous control of the phase, momentum, amplitude and polarisation of light and hence promise great utility in realisation of compact photonic devices. In this paper, we demonstrate a novel chip-scale device suitable for simultaneous polarisation and spectral measurements through use of six integrated plasmonic metasurfaces (IPMs), which diffract light with a given polarisation state and spectral component into well-defined spatial domains. Full calibration and characterisation of our device is presented, whereby good spectral resolution and polarisation accu…
Resonant metasurfaces are devices composed of nanostructured sub-wavelength scatterers that generate narrow optical resonances, enabling applications in filtering, nonlinear optics, and molecular fingerprinting. It is highly desirable for these applications to incorporate such devices with multiple, high-quality-factor resonances; however, it can be challenging to obtain more than a pair of narrow resonances in a single plasmonic surface. Here, we demonstrate a multi-resonant metasurface that operates by extending the functionality of surface lattice resonances, which are the collective respon…
On-chip spectral imaging based on engineered spectral modulation and computational spectral reconstruction provides a promising scheme for portable spectral cameras. However, the angle dependence of modulation units results in the angle sensitivity of spectral imaging, which limits its practical applications. Here, we proposed a design for angle-robust spectral recovery based on a group of topology-optimized plasmonic metasurface units under a 30° field-of-view, and demonstrate angle-insensitive on-chip spectral imaging in the wavelength range of 450 to 750 nm for average polarization. Further…
Laser-Scrawled Random Plasmonic Metasurface in Nanoseconds for Physical Unclonable Functions
Dalian University of Technology（大连理工大学）；Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大连化学物理研究所）；China Jiliang University（中国计量大学）
Plasmonic colour printing based on engineered metasurfaces has revolutionized colour display science due to its unprecedented subwavelength resolution and high-density optical data storage. However, advanced plasmonic displays with novel functionalities including dynamic multicolour printing, animations, and highly secure encryption have remained in their infancy. Here we demonstrate a dynamic plasmonic colour display technique that enables all the aforementioned functionalities using catalytic magnesium metasurfaces. Controlled hydrogenation and dehydrogenation of the constituent magnesium na…
Metasurfaces, the two-dimensional counterpart of metamaterials, have caught great attention thanks to their powerful capabilities on manipulation of electromagnetic waves. Recent times have seen the emergence of a variety of metasurfaces exhibiting not only countless functionalities, but also a reconfigurable response. Additionally, digital or coding metasurfaces have revolutionized the field by describing the device as a matrix of discrete building block states, thus drawing clear parallelisms with information theory and opening new ways to model, compose, and (re)program advanced metasurface…
Plasmonic metasurfaces represent a promising platform for enhancing light-matter interaction. Active control of the optical response of metasurfaces is desirable for applications such as beam-steering, modulators and switches, biochemical sensors, and compact optoelectronic devices. Here we use a plasmonic metasurface with two Fano resonances to enhance the interaction of infrared light with electrically controllable single layer graphene. It is experimentally shown that the narrow spectral width of these resonances, combined with strong light/graphene coupling, enables reflectivity modulation…
We review the latest theoretical advances in the application of the framework of Transformation Optics for the analytical description of deeply sub-wavelength electromagnetic phenomena. First, we present a general description of the technique, together with its usual exploitation for metamaterial conception and optimization in different areas of wave physics. Next, we discuss in detail the design of plasmonic metasurfaces, including the description of singular geometries which allow for broadband absorption in ultrathin platforms. Finally, we discuss the quasi-analytical treatment of plasmon-e…
Actively tunable and reconfigurable wavefront shaping by optical metasurfaces poses a significant technical challenge often requiring unconventional materials engineering and nanofabrication. Most wavefront-shaping metasurfaces can be considered 'local' in that their operation depends on the responses of individual meta-units. In contrast, 'nonlocal' metasurfaces function based on the modes supported by many adjacent meta-units, resulting in sharp spectral features but typically no spatial control of the outgoing wavefront. Recently, nonlocal metasurfaces based on quasi-bound states in the con…
Plasmonic metasurfaces are investigated that consist of a sub wavelength line pattern in an ultrathin (~ 10 nm) silver film, designed for extraordinarily suppressed transmission (EOST) in the visible spectral range. Measurements with a near-field scanning optical microscope (NSOM) demonstrate that far field irradiation creates resonant excitations of antenna like (bright) modes that are localized on the metal ridges. In contrast, bound (dark) surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) launched from an NSOM tip propagate well across the metasurface, preferentially perpendicular to the grating lines.
The coupled light-matter modes supported by plasmonic metasurfaces can be combined with topological principles to yield subwavelength topological valley states of light. We give a systematic presentation of the topological valley states available for lattices of metallic nanoparticles: All possible lattices with hexagonal symmetry are considered, as well as valley states emerging on a square lattice. Several unique effects which have yet to be explored in plasmonics are identified, such as robust guiding, filtering and splitting of modes, as well as dual-band effects. We demonstrate these by m…
The concept of optical phase discontinuities is applied to the design and demonstration of aberration-free planar lenses and axicons, comprising a phased array of ultrathin subwavelength spaced optical antennas. The lenses and axicons consist of radial distributions of V-shaped nanoantennas that generate respectively spherical wavefronts and non-diffracting Bessel beams at telecom wavelengths. Simulations are also presented to show that our aberration-free designs are applicable to high numerical aperture lenses such as flat microscope objectives.
Chiral nanophotonic devices are promising candidates for chiral molecules sensing, polarization diverse nanophotonics and display technologies. Active chiral nanophotonic devices, where the optical chirality can be controlled by an external stimulus has triggered great research interest. However, efficient modulation of the optical chirality has been challenging. Here, we demonstrate switching of the extrinsic chirality by applied magnetic fields in a magneto-plasmonic metasurface device based on a magneto-optical oxide material, Ce1Y2Fe5O12 (Ce:YIG). Thanks to the low optical loss and strong …
