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International audience; Photocatalysis using semiconductor materials like titania (TiO 2) is a key method for environmental purification or solar fuel generation. Nanostructures that maximize incident light absorption are highly desired to enhance depollution rate or solar-to-fuel conversion efficiency in limited volumes of catalysts. Here, we report on structural and optical properties of metasurfaces based on a 20 nm thick anatase layer conformally deposited onto a wavelength-scale two-dimensional periodic photonic lattice. We investigate the NO degradation using such metasurfaces, and evaluate the impact of the patterning on photocatalytic activities between 340 and 400 nm. In the 380-385 nm range, the mean photochemical efficiency is increased by a factor up to 5.7 compared to flat references, with an overall threefold enhancement within the whole spectral range of interest. This approach can be applied to numerous types of systems by varying active materials, leading to substantial improvements in air/water depollution, water splitting or artificial photosynthesis processes.

Interference usually occurs between two non-orthogonally polarized light beams. Hence, metasurface enabled polarization multiplexing is generally conducted under two orthogonal polarization states to realize independent intensity and/or phase modulations. Herein, we show that polarization multiplexed metasurfaces can work under three non-orthogonal polarization states to realize tri-channel image displays with independent information encoding. Specifically, enabled by orientation degeneracy, each nanostructure of the metasurface operates with triple-manipulations of light, i.e., two channels for independent intensity manipulation under π/4 and 3π/8 linearly polarized (LP) light, respectively, and one channel for phase manipulation without polarization control. We experimentally demonstrate this concept by recording one continuous-brightness polychromatic image and one binary-brightness polychromatic image right at the metasurface plane, while a continuous-brightness polychromatic image is reconstructed in the far field, corresponding to three independent channels, respectively. More interestingly, in another design strategy with separated image encoding of two wavelengths, up to six independent image-display channels can be established and information delivery becomes safer by utilizing encryption algorithms. With the features of high information capacity and high security, the proposed meta-devices can empower advanced research and applications in multi-channel image displays, orbital angular momentum multiplexing communication, information encryption, anti-counterfeiting, multifunctional integrated nano-optoelectronics, etc.

Meta-lens has successfully been developed for a variety of optical functions. We demonstrate a light-field edge detection imaging system with a gallium nitride achromatic meta-lens array. It enables edge detection from one dimension to three dimensions. The designed meta-lens array consists of 60 by 60 achromatic meta-lenses, which operate in the visible range from 400 to 660 nm. All of the light field information of objects in the scene can be captured and computed. The focused edge images from one dimension to three dimensions are extracted with depth estimation by image rendering. Three dimensions edge detection is two dimensions edge imaging with depth information. The focused edge images can be obtained by the sub-image reconstruction of the light field image. Our multidimensional edge detection system by achromatic meta-lens array brings novel advantages, such as broadband detection, data volume reduction, and device miniaturization capacity. Results of our experiments show new insight into applications of biological diagnose and robotic vision.

International audience; This paper presents the exact closed-form solution for a new planar lens, hereinafter referred to as Reflecting Luneburg Lens (RLL). The proposed structure consists of two stacked parallel plate waveguides of circular shape. The rays generated by a point source located at the periphery of the bottom waveguide propagate along curvilinear paths, whose trajectories result from a variable refractive index profile with azimuthal symmetry. Then, these rays encounter a reflecting boundary and emerge all parallel in the upper uniform waveguide. The behavior of this lens resembles that of a flat Luneburg lens, with the fundamental difference that it works in reflection. The exact refractive index profile is found by solving the non-linear integral equation of ray-congruence trough a truncated Abel transform method. The concept is numerically verified through different implementations of the effective refractive index profile, including a metasurface-based implementation. The proposed lens triggers new possibilities that the normal flat Luneburg lens does not offer, and it is applicable in a large variety of microwave, terahertz and optical devices.

Design, realization, and measurements of an $X$ -band antenna for data downlink (DDL) from low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites are presented. This antenna has an isoflux radiation pattern and operates in dual circular polarization with cross-polar discrimination (XPD) higher than 18 dB on the operational bandwidth. Two solutions are first proposed: one realized by a metasurface with circular strips printed on a dielectric slab and another realized by concentric metallic corrugations. Starting from a basic scattering mechanism of a self-complementary ring-type metasurface excited by a perfectly polarized source, both these antennas are designed by optimizing an equivalent anisotropic impedance surface excited by a short hat feed. The corrugated antenna is realized and measured, confirming that the performances are compliant with the requirements for next-generation DDL antennas.

International audience; We demonstrate a silicon (Si)-gallium arsenide (GaAs) semiconductor based holographic metasurface antenna operating at 94 GHz. The metasurface antenna molds the radiated beam by resorting to a holographic approach involving the modulation of a guided-mode generated by a pillbox beam former. The pillbox beam former is fed by three integrated horns in Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) technology located in the focal plane of the parabolic reflector of the pillbox beam former. The three horns correspond to three independent beams and allow beam steering by switching from one feed to another. The proposed metasurface antenna is planar and extremely lowprofile, thus suitable for small platforms such as CubeSats/SmallSats. A prototype validates the concept demonstrating a directivity as high as 31.9 dBi and a reflection coefficient lower than-15 dB at 94 GHz.

Optical metasurfaces have been extensively investigated, demonstrating diverse and multiple functionalities with complete control over the transmitted and reflected fields. Most optical metasurfaces are however static, with only a few configurations offering (rather limited) electrical control, thereby jeopardizing their application prospects in emerging flat optics technologies. Here, we suggest an approach to realize electrically tunable optical metasurfaces, demonstrating dynamic Fresnel lens focusing. The active Fresnel lens (AFL) exploits the electro-optic Pockels effect in a 300-nm-thick lithium niobate layer sandwiched between a continuous thick and nanostructured gold film serving as electrodes. We fabricate and characterize the AFL, focusing 800-900 nm radiation at the distance of 40 $\mathrm{\mu}$m with the focusing efficiency of 15 % and demonstrating the modulation depth of 1.5 % with the driving voltage of $\pm 10$ V within the bandwidth of $\sim\! 4$ MHz. We believe that the electro-optic metasurface concept introduced is useful for designing dynamic flat optics components., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures

In this article, bandwidth enhancement of a microstrip patch antenna using a new kind of metasurface is discussed. This new geometry is used to generate new resonances in antenna and with an optimal position of the metasurface in relation to antenna we can overlap the resonances and obtain a large bandwidth. The proposed antenna showed a bandwidth from 5.1 GHz to 8.0 GHz what can it able to be applied in WiFi 5 and 6. Numerical results were obtained with Ansys HFSS software. A prototype was built and measurements for S11, Smith chart and gain were performed. Numerical and experimental results are in good agreement.

We demonstrate a simple, cost-effective method to enhance the photoluminescence intensity of monolayer MoS2. A hexagonal symmetric Au metasurface, made by polystyrene nanosphere lithography and metal coating, is developed to enhance the photoluminescence intensity of monolayer MoS2. By using nanospheres of different sizes, the localized surface plasmon resonances of the Au metasurfaces can be effectively tuned. By transferring monolayer MoS2 onto the Au metasurface, the photoluminescence signal of the monolayer MoS2 can be significantly enhanced up to 12-fold over a square-centimeter area. The simple, large-area, cost-effective fabrication technique could pave a new way for plasmon-enhanced light-mater interactions of atomically thin two-dimensional materials.

We study how nanophotonic structures can be used for determining the position of a nearby nanoscale object with subwavelength accuracy. Through perturbing the near-field environment of a metasurface transducer consisting of nano-apertures in a metallic film, the location of the nanoscale object is transduced into the transducer’s far-field optical response. By monitoring the scattering pattern of the nanophotonic near-field transducer and comparing it to measured reference data, we demonstrate the two-dimensional localization of the object accurate to 24 nm across an area of 2 × 2 μm. We find that adding complexity to the nanophotonic transducer allows localization over a larger area while maintaining resolution, as it enables encoding more information on the position of the object in the transducer’s far-field response.

Herein, we investigate the influence of an AlGaN metasurface on AlGaN-based deep-ultraviolet light-emitting diodes' light-extraction efficiency by utilizing the 3D finite-difference time-domain method. As the first step in this study, we optimize an AlGaN metasurface to maximize the transmittance from LED to air. Then, six different flip-chip structures' light-extraction efficiencies are compared with each other to judge the usefulness of the metasurface's adoption on AlGaN-based LED. Considered structures are classified into two categories, with and without inclined sidewall, respectively. Each classified structure is subdivided again by three factors: flat interface, roughed cones, and metasurface on n-AlGaN. Extracted results show that the combination of inclined sidewall and the AlGaN metasurface shows synergetic results positively increasing light-extraction efficiency.

Polarization singularities of vectorial electromagnetic fields locate at the positions (such as points, lines, or surfaces) where properties of polarization ellipses are not defined. They are manifested as circular and linear polarization, for which respectively the semi-major axes and normal vectors of polarization ellipses become indefinite. First observed in conical diffraction in the 1830s, the field of polarization singularities has been systematically reshaped and deepened by many pioneers of wave optics. Together with other exotic phenomena such as non-Hermiticity and topology, polarization singularities have been introduced into the vibrant field of nanophotonics, rendering unprecedented flexibilities for manipulations of light-matter interactions at the nanoscale. Here we review the recent results on the generation and observation of polarization singularities in metaphotonics. We start with the discussion of polarization singularities in the Mie theory, where both electric and magnetic multipoles are explored from perspectives of local and global polarization properties. We then proceed with the discussion of various photonic-crystal structures, for which both near- and far-field patterns manifest diverse polarization singularities characterized by the integer Poincare or more general half-integer Hopf indices (topological charges). Next, we review the most recent studies of conversions from polarization to phase singularities in scalar wave optics, demonstrating how bound states in the continuum can be exploited to generate directly optical vortices of various charges. Throughout our paper, we discuss and highlight several fundamental concepts and demonstrate their close connections and special links to metaphotonics. We believe polarization singularities can provide novel perspectives for light-matter manipulation for both fundamental studies and their practical applications., 17 pages, 7 figures

This research proposes a compact quadri-cluster broadband circularly polarized (CP) sequentially-rotated metasurface-based (MTS) antenna array for the C-band frequency spectrum. One cluster of the quadri-cluster MTS-based antenna array consisted of 4 $\times $ 4 S-shaped periodically-arranged MTS elements. The sequentially-rotated feed network was utilized to realize circular polarization and improve the impedance bandwidth (IBW), 3-dB axial ratio bandwidth (ARBW) and 3-dB boresight gain bandwidth of the quadri-cluster MTS-based antenna array. Simulations were performed and results were compared with experiments. The measured IBW and ARBW were 84.74% (4.0–9.0 GHz) and 57.6% (4.2–7.6 GHz) at the center frequency of 5.9 GHz, rendering the proposed quadri-cluster MTS-based antenna array suitable for satellite communication applications. In addition, the quadri-cluster MTS-based antenna array achieved the measured 3-dB boresight gain bandwidth of 81.3% (3.9–8.7 GHz), the maximum gain of 10.04 dBic at 5.6 GHz, and low radar cross-section. Specifically, the novelty of this research lies in the use of the sequentially-rotated feed network with the S-shaped MTS elements to effectively enhance ARBW of the quadri-cluster MTS-based antenna array for the C-band frequency spectrum.

This research proposed an S-shaped metasurface (MTS)-based wideband circularly polarized (CP) patch antenna for C-band uplink frequency spectrum. The proposed MTS-based CP patch antenna was of low profile and fabricated on three substrate layers: upper, middle, and lower. The upper substrate contained $4\times 4$ periodic S-shaped MTS elements, the middle substrate functioned as ground plane with a rectangular-shaped slot at the center, and the lower substrate contained a coplanar waveguide with microstrip and ground. The S-shaped MTS elements converted linearly polarized (LP) into CP wave. Simulations were performed, and an antenna prototype was fabricated and experiments carried out. The measured impedance bandwidth and axial ratio bandwidth (ARBW) at the center frequency of 5.9 GHz were 43.22% (4.05 – 6.6 GHz) and 22% (5.3 – 6.6 GHz), respectively, rendering the proposed antenna suitable for satellite communication applications. The proposed antenna achieved the maximum gain of 6.16 dBic at 5.6 GHz. The novelty of this research lies in the use of S-shaped MTS elements to efficiently convert LP into CP wave and achieve wider ARBW for the C-band uplink spectrum.

A dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) with the loading of metasurface (MS) is proposed for low-profile, wide-bandwidth and compact-size. Firstly, an MS structure consisting of 6 × 6 periodic metallic patch cells is loaded above the DRA. It aims to excite an additional TM surface wave above the fundamental TE111 mode of the rectangular DRA. Then, the shorting walls are printed on two sides of the dielectric, thus moving down the operating frequency with respect to its TM surface wave mode. As such, the bandwidth of the antenna is significantly widened with compact-size under the operation of TE111 and TM surface wave modes. Finally, the proposed DRA with enhanced performance is fabricated and tested. The results show that an impedance bandwidth of the antenna is dramatically increased to about 17.2%, covering the frequency range from 1.75 to 2.08 GHz, which is about 9.6 times wider than the traditional DRA at the same thickness (1.8%). Besides, it still maintains the broadside radiation pattern with stable gain of around 6.6 dBi and fairly low cross polarizations of below -26 dB. Particularly, the overall size of the radiator still maintains as small as about 0.32λ0× 0.32λ0 × 0.044λ0. It should be noted that the analysis of the antenna is carried out by using Ansys HFSS software version 14.0 and ADS 2011.

Optical characteristics of square-latticed metasurfaces are analyzed by equations derived from a dipole-quadrupole system. For the metasurface composed of Si nanospheres, meta-atoms maintain the anapole characteristics of the single scatterer, which are not affected by the lattice period. The far-field response of the metasurface thus can be engineered without significantly disturbing near-fields in meta-atoms. In addition, as exhibited with Ag/Si core–shell nanospheres, the transmittance of metasurface at anapole can also be modulated and even nulled by shifting the lattice magnetic dipole and quadrupole resonances. In a small-period metasurface, the near-field interaction of adjacent meta-atoms manipulates the lattice resonance behavior, leading to significant modulation in transmittance at anapole.

Facilitating anti-reflection has been of great scientific and practical interest due to its diverse applications in optical devices including solar cells and photodetectors. Various anti-reflection schemes are exploited and elaborated to realize effective broadband suppression of reflected light. In this work, we present and analyze a metasurface coating on silicon for efficient anti-reflection by leveraging the design rules of the Chebyshev transformer in the field of transmission line theory in the microwave regime. We explore the underlying physics of the metasurface by comparing the two representative types of constituent nanostructures and evaluating their optical properties using effective index retrieval methods. In particular, by designing nanostructures with subtle vertical etching in the pyramid valley, a broadband anti-reflection coating ranging from 400 to 1100 nm is achieved with reflection of less than 3%. We believe that the proposed design rule and analysis for this Chebyshev metasurface could pave an important way to realize systematic and effective anti-reflection schemes for diverse optical devices.

Mid-air collisions (MACs) are commonly caused by temporary or permanent loss of flight control resulting in catastrophic damages and hence must be countered with suitable technology. The avionic industry has been using Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) for avoiding mid-air collisions since 1987. The TCAS either uses an Omni-directional antenna or a directional antenna for the surveillance of other nearby aircraft. The existing TCAS directional antennas, i.e., an array of monopole antennas are characterized by a maximum gain of 3.6 dB, which is regarded as low. As a result, many research has been carried out to find the alternative for the TCAS antenna and have found microstrip patch antenna (MPA) which yield some promising results such as feed flexibility, multiband, beam steering, etc. However, the MPA still suffers from disadvantages such as low gain and narrow bandwidth. Hence, lately, a tremendous amount of work has been carried out to enhance the gain of the MPA. In this paper, we first review the key methods that has been reported so far to improve the gain of the traditional TCAS antenna. We note that, in most of the reported work, conventional techniques such as parasitic patches, and shorting pins are used to improve the gain of MPA, and no substantial work was done using advanced techniques such as electromagnetic-band gap (EBG), metamaterials and metasurfaces. Hence, we further review the work that has been carried out to improve the gain of vertically polarized MPAs using advanced techniques for L- and S-band (up to 3 GHz). Many advanced structures that are easily adapted to enhance the gain of TCAS antenna are thoroughly discussed in this work.

Achromatic metalens composed of arrays of subwavelength nanostructures with spatially varying geometries is attractive for a number of optical applications. However, the limited degree of freedom in the single layer achromatic metasurface design makes it difficult to simultaneously guarantee the sufficient phase dispersion and high diffraction efficiency, which restricts the achromatic bandwidth and efficiency of metalens. Here we propose and demonstrate a high efficiency achromatic metalens with diffraction-limited focusing capability at the wavelength ranging from 1000 nm to 1700 nm. The metalens comprises two stacked nanopillar metasurfaces, by which the required focusing phase and dispersion compensation can be controlled independently. As a result, in addition to the large achromatic bandwidth, the averaged focusing efficiency of the bilayer metalens is higher than 64% at the near-infrared region. Our design opens up the possibility to obtain the required phase dispersion and efficiency simultaneously, which is of great significance to design broadband metasurface-based optical devices.

Wireless energy transmission and harvesting techniques have recently emerged as attractive solutions to realize wireless powered networks. By eliminating fundamental power constraints arising from the use of conventionally battery sources, wireless modes of energy transmission provide viable means to power wireless network devices away from the grid. Metasurfaces have emerged as key enablers for the use of microwave energy as a power source. Their unique abilities to tailor electromagnetic waves have motivated significant research interest into their use for power-focused microwave systems. This article provides an overview of progress in the development of metasurface implementations for microwave energy transmitters and energy harvesters. First, the paper provides a basic introduction to metasurfaces, after which it reviews research progress in metasurfaces for microwave energy transmission and harvesting. Also highlighted are key parameters by which the performance of such metasurface designs are characterized. In addition, an overview of studies on metasurfaces as reconfigurable intelligent surfaces in wireless networks supporting the simultaneous transmission of information and energy is presented. Finally, the paper highlights existing challenges, and explores future directions, including opportunities to control radio environments through ambiently energized reconfigurable intelligent surfaces in next-generation wireless networks.

Airy beams exhibit intriguing properties such as nonspreading, self-bending, and self-healing and have attracted considerable recent interest because of their many potential applications in photonics, such as to beam focusing, light-sheet microscopy, and biomedical imaging. However, previous approaches to generate Airy beams using photonic structures have suffered from severe chromatic problems arising from strong frequency dispersion of the scatterers. Here, we design and fabricate a metasurface composed of silicon posts for the frequency range 0.4–0.8 THz in transmission mode, and we experimentally demonstrate achromatic Airy beams exhibiting autofocusing properties. We further show numerically that a generated achromatic Airy-beam-based metalens exhibits self-healing properties that are immune to scattering by particles and that it also possesses a larger depth of focus than a traditional metalens. Our results pave the way to the realization of flat photonic devices for applications to noninvasive biomedical imaging and light-sheet microscopy, and we provide a numerical demonstration of a device protocol.

Integrating multiple functionalities into one single device is of great importance for ever-growing demand of photonic device. Optical vortex beam contains orbital angular momentum (OAM) and spin angular momentum (SAM) associated with phase and polarization singularities respectively, which has contributed to various application including optical manipulation, optical trapping and high-speed optical communication. Traditional methods to detect its phase and polarization mostly focus on the functionality of single dimensional optical field. However, quite different from the previous reports, we here propose a novel approach to measure the phase and polarization state based on the full use of near and far-field light functionalities in one single metadevice, which supports spin-controlled surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) and topological charge-dependent focus spot position. On the one hand, this design makes the most of multidimensional field optical scattering characteristics to rich the functions of metadevice. On the other hand, it provides a novel concept to recognize various angular momentum information of vortex beam. We believe that such design will have great potential for the integration of different sub-wavelength optical components.

Splitting the spectrum of incident light at nanoscale has been of great scientific and practical interest due to its potential application in various optical sensors. For many years, researchers have been striving to realize the full-color sorting of light at subwavelength scale, while keeping the loss of incident photons to a minimum. In this article, we present semiconductor-based metasurfaces that facilitate the efficient sorting of full-color by inducing anti-Hermitian coupling between multiple nanoantenna arrays. To achieve this, we first explore how the coherent interactions between maximally crafted nanoantennas in the metasurfaces can be effectively controlled by judiciously positioning them in both lateral and vertical directions, which leads to the switched coupling of light at each target position. Based on the analysis, we demonstrate a metasurface-based absorber that features efficient, spectropolarimetric detections over the entire visible spectrum, ranging from 470 to 630 nm. In addition, the metasurface detects relatively narrow spectral linewidth of 60 nm and shows the sensitivity up to 70%, which surpasses the previous works on subwavelength photon sorting or color filter-based detection system. We envision that our approach provides guidelines for realizing the metasurfaces with enhanced functionalities, that is the increase of spectral channels for detection in a given subwavelength-scaled unit cell.

This paper analyzes the optimal communication involving large intelligent surfaces (LIS) starting from electromagnetic arguments. Since the numerical solution of the corresponding eigenfunctions problem is in general computationally prohibitive, simple but accurate analytical expressions for the link gain and available spatial degrees-of-freedom (DoF) are derived. It is shown that the achievable DoF and gain offered by the wireless link are determined only by geometric factors, and that the classical Friis' formula is no longer valid in this scenario where the transmitter and receiver could operate in the near-field regime. Furthermore, results indicate that, contrarily to classical MIMO systems, when using LIS-based antennas DoF larger than 1 can be exploited even in strong line-of-sight (LOS) channel conditions, which corresponds to a significant increase in spatial capacity density, especially when working at millimeter waves., Comment: Presented in part at thge IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), 2020. In publication on IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Special issue on Wireless Networks Empowered by Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces, 2020 (IEEE JSAC, Nov 2020)

A single-band terahertz (THz) high performance metasurface absorber is designed and verified based on the ohmic loss of the cross-shaped metal array. In the first set of experiments, three samples with structural parameters w = 2.4 μ m , w = 3.8 μ m , and w = 4.2 μ m are prepared and measured. The absorption peak is enhanced from 80.2% to 96.8%, and the resonance frequency is reduced from 35.96 THz to 31.06 THz. In the second set of experiments, three other samples with structural parameters L = 8.0 μ m , L = 8.4 μ m , and L = 8.8 μ m are prepared and measured (other structural parameters remained unchanged, and the test conditions remained unchanged). The absorption peak is increased from 80.2% to 88.8%, and resonance frequency is shifted to 27.28 THz. In the third set of experiments, samples with structural parameters w = 2.4 μ m are placed in three different gases. Three high sensitivities are achieved by this samples: S N O = 1421 H z / R I U , S C O = 1674 H z / R I U , and S C O 2 = 1897 H z / R I U . This proposed metasurface absorber shows the potential in gas sensing.

Active metasurfaces, in which the optical property of a metasurface device can be controlled by external stimuli, have attracted great research interest recently. For optical switching and modulation applications, high-performance active metasurfaces need to show high transparency, high power efficiency, as well as ultrafast switching and large-scale fabrication capability. This paper reports Au/VO2-based active metasurfaces meeting the requirements above. Centimeter-scale Au/VO2 metasurfaces are fabricated by polystyrene sphere colloidal crystal self-assembly. The devices show optical modulation on-off ratio up to 12.7 dB and insertion loss down to 3.3 dB at 2200 nm wavelength in the static heating experiment, and ΔT/T of 10% in ultrafast pump-probe experiments. In particular, by judiciously aligning the surface plasmon resonance wavelength to the pump wavelength of the femtosecond laser, the enhanced electric field at 800 nm is capable to switch off the extraordinary optical transmission effect at 2200 nm in 100 fs time scale. Compared to VO2 thin-film samples, the devices also show 50% power reduction for all-optical modulation. Our work provides a practical way to fabricate large-scale and power-efficient active metasurfaces for ultrafast optical modulation.

Two photodetectors for measuring transmission and two bulky, separated narrowband filters for picking a target gas absorption line and a non-absorbing reference from broadband emission are typically required for dual-band non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) gas sensing. Metal-dielectric-metal (MDM) metasurface plasmon cavities, precisely controllable narrowband absorbers, suggest a next-generation, nanophotonic approach. Here, we demonstrate a dual-band MDM cavity detector that consolidates the function of two detectors and two filters into a single device by employing resonant photon sorting-a function unique to metasurfaces. Two MDM cavities sandwiching a quantum well infrared photodetector (QWIP) with distinct resonance wavelengths are alternately arranged in a subwavelength period. The large absorption cross section of the cavities ensures ~95% efficient lateral sorting of photons by wavelength into the corresponding detector within a near-field region. The flow of incident photons is thus converted into two independent photocurrents for dual-band detection. Our dual-band photodetectors show competitive external quantum efficiencies up to 38% (responsivity 2.1 A/W, peak wavelength 6.9 5m) at 78 K. By tailoring one resonance to an absorption peak of NO2 (6.25 5m) and the other to a non-absorbing reference wavelength (7.15 5m), NDIR NO2 gas sensing with 10 ppm accuracy and 1 ms response times is demonstrated. Through experiment and numerical simulation, we confirm near-perfect absorption at the resonant cavity and suppressed absorption at its non-resonant counterpart, characteristic of resonant photon sorting. Dual-band sensing across the mid-infrared should be possible by tailoring the cavities and quantum well to desired wavelengths.

Over the past decade, artificially engineered optical materials and nanostructured thin films have revolutionized the area of photonics by employing novel concepts of metamaterials and metasurfaces where spatially varying structures yield tailorable “by design” effective electromagnetic properties. The current state-of-the-art approach to designing and optimizing such structures relies heavily on simplistic, intuitive shapes for their unit cells or metaatoms. Such an approach cannot provide the global solution to a complex optimization problem where metaatom shape, in-plane geometry, out-of-plane architecture, and constituent materials have to be properly chosen to yield the maximum performance. In this work, we present a novel machine learning–assisted global optimization framework for photonic metadevice design. We demonstrate that using an adversarial autoencoder (AAE) coupled with a metaheuristic optimization framework significantly enhances the optimization search efficiency of the metadevice configurations with complex topologies. We showcase the concept of physics-driven compressed design space engineering that introduces advanced regularization into the compressed space of an AAE based on the optical responses of the devices. Beyond the significant advancement of the global optimization schemes, our approach can assist in gaining comprehensive design “intuition” by revealing the underlying physics of the optical performance of metadevices with complex topologies and material compositions.

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 continuum have been shown to produce designer wavefronts only across the narrow bandwidth of the supported Fano resonance. Here, we leverage the enhanced light-matter interactions associated with sharp Fano resonances to explore the active modulation of optical spectra and wavefronts by refractive index tuning and mechanical stretching. We experimentally demonstrate proof-of-principle thermo-optically tuned nonlocal metasurfaces made of silicon, and numerically demonstrate nonlocal metasurfaces that thermo-optically switch between distinct wavefront shapes. This meta-optics platform for thermally reconfigurable wavefront-shaping requires neither unusual materials and fabrication nor active control of individual meta-units., 15 pages, 6 figures

Spatial differentiator is the key element for edge detection, which is indispensable in image processing, computer vision involving image recognition, image restoration, image compression, and so on. Spatial differentiators based on metasurfaces are simpler and more compact compared with traditional bulky optical analog differentiators. However, most of them still rely on complex optical systems, leading to the degraded compactness and efficiency of the edge detection systems. To further reduce the complexity of the edge detection system, a monolithic metasurface spatial differentiator is demonstrated based on asymmetric photonic spin-orbit interactions. Edge detection can be accomplished via such a monolithic metasurface using the polarization degree. Experimental results show that the designed monolithic spatial differentiator works in a broadband range. Moreover, 2D edge detection is experimentally demonstrated by the proposed monolithic metasurface. The proposed design can be applied at visible and near-infrared wavelengths by proper dielectric materials and designs. We envision this approach may find potential applications in optical analog computing on compact optical platforms.

A novel design of a tunable optical switch based on epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) metasurface is proposed, which can work as an electro-optical or an all-optical switch, and be tuned by gate-voltages, incident angles, and intensity of pump light. The result shows that the coupling of the ENZ mode and plasmon resonance lead to an obvious Rabi splitting which can be observed in the transmission spectrum. Numerical analysis also demonstrates that the coupling belongs to the ultra-strong coupling regime. The proposed design can achieve electro-optical switching with a large modulation depth of up to ~ 17 dB, all-optical switching with an extinction ratio exceeding 5 dB and an ultrafast response time of 650 fs.

The polarization-independence optical metasurface has attracted great interests due to breaking the polarization limitations. In general, polarization-independence characteristics of metasurface almost always originates from the polarization-independence characteristics of the used resonant antenna itself. In this paper, a novel approach is proposed to achieve polarization-independence metasurface based on the irrotational nanobricks. Firstly, the intrinsic characteristics of a half wave plate has been investigated, which can realize co-polarization transmission of X-linear-polarization (XLP) and Y-linear-polarization (YLP) lights, and cross-polarization transmission of circular polarization (CP) light, simultaneously. Eight high-efficiency silicon nanobricks with the phase shifts over 2π are designed as the basic unit cell, which have the same transmitted amplitude and phase for the CP and XLP light, and the phase difference for XLP and YLP light. We have also designed the beam deflector, metalens and vortex beam generator, which possess identical function for cross-polarized CP and co-polarized XLP and YLP light, respectively. These results can promote the deeper understanding of metasurface, and give a new method to design polarization-independent optical devices.

Optical metasurfaces, planar subwavelength nanoantenna arrays with the singular ability to sculpt wavefront in almost arbitrary manners, are poised to become a powerful tool enabling compact and high-performance optics with novel functionalities. A particularly intriguing research direction within this field is active metasurfaces, whose optical response can be dynamically tuned postfabrication, thus allowing a plurality of applications unattainable with traditional bulk optics. Designing reconfigurable optics based on active metasurfaces is, however, presented with a unique challenge, since the optical quality of the devices must be optimized at multiple optical states. In this article, we provide a critical review on the active meta-optics design principles and algorithms that are applied across structural hierarchies ranging from single meta-atoms to full meta-optical devices. The discussed approaches are illustrated by specific examples of reconfigurable metasurfaces based on optical phase-change materials.

Multi-channel information encryption technology has been implemented by optical metasurfaces owing to their superior ability to control the phase, amplitude, wavelength and polarization of incident light. However, current metasurface-based multi-channel encryption technologies suffer from information leakage in non-full channel decoding processes. To better increase the security of the encrypted information, we develop a secret shared phase encoding scheme by combining a visual secret sharing scheme with a metasurface-based phase-encoding technique. Our method achieves its high-concealment through mapping the target image into a set of unrecognizable phase-only keys that are subsequently encoded by a multi-wavelength metasurface. In the decryption process, the secret information can be reconstructed only by decoding and stacking all the wavelength channels of the metasurface. At the same time, chaotic images can be extracted from the other channels without revealing any original information. The simulated results and the theoretical analysis show the strong robustness and high security of our encryption setup, which is sure to find applications in emerging optical encryption schemes.

Although many approaches have been proposed to manipulate propagating waves (PWs) and surface waves (SWs), usually each operation needs a separate meta-device, being unfavorable for optical integrations. Here, we propose a scheme to design a single meta-device that can efficiently generate SWs and/or PWs with pre-designed wavefronts, under the excitations of circularly polarized (CP) PWs with different helicity. As a proof of concept, we design and fabricate a microwave meta-device and experimentally demonstrate that it can convert incident CP waves of opposite helicity to SWs possessing different wavefronts and traveling to opposite directions, both exhibiting very high efficiencies. We further generalize our scheme to design a meta-device and numerically demonstrate that it can either excite a SW beam with tailored wavefront or generate a far-field PW with pre-designed wavefront, as shined by CP waves with different helicity. Our work opens the door to achieving simultaneous controls on far- and near-field electromagnetic environments based on a single ultra-compact platform.

The integration of quantum well infrared photodetectors with plasmonic cavities has allowed for demonstration of sensitive photodetectors in the mid-infrared up to room-temperature operating conditions. However, clear guidelines for optimizing device structure for these detectors have not been developed. Using simple stripe cavity detectors as a model system, we clarify the fundamental factors that improve photodetector performance. By etching semiconductor material between the stripes, the cavity resonance wavelength was expected to blue-shift, and the electric field was predicted to strongly increase, resulting in higher responsivity than unetched stripe detectors. Contrary to our predictions, etched stripe detectors showed lower responsivities, indicating surface effects at the sidewalls and reduced absorption. Nevertheless, etching led to higher detectivity due to significantly reduced detector dark current. These results suggest that etched structures are the superior photodetector design, and that appropriate sidewall surface treatments could further improve device performance. Finally, through polarization and incidence angle dependence measurements of the stripe detectors, we clarify how the design of previously demonstrated wired patch antennas led to improved device performance. These results are widely applicable for cavity designs over a broad range of wavelengths within the infrared, and can serve as a roadmap for improving next-generation infrared photodetectors.

Controlling spin electromagnetic waves by ultra-thin Pancharatnam-Berry (PB) metasurfaces show promising prospects in the optical and wireless communications. One of the major challenge is to precisely control over the complex wavefronts and spatial power intensity characteristics without relying on massive algorithm optimizations, which requires independent amplitude and phase tuning. However, traditional PB phase can only provide phase control. Here, by introducing the interference of dual geometric phases, we propose a metasurface that can provide arbitrary amplitude and phase manipulations on meta-atom level for spin waves, achieving direct routing of multi-beams with desired intensity distribution. As the experimental demonstration, we design two microwave metasurfaces for respectively controlling the far-field and near-field multi-beam generations with desired spatial scatterings and power allocations, achieving full control of both sophisticated wavefronts and their energy distribution. This approach to directly generate editable spatial beam intensity with tailored wavefront may pave a way to design advanced meta-devices that can be potentially used in many real-world applications, such as multifunctional, multiple-input multiple-output and high-quality imaging devices.

The technologically-relevant task of feature extraction from data performed in deep-learning systems is routinely accomplished as repeated fast Fourier transforms (FFT) electronically in prevalent domain-specific architectures such as in graphics processing units (GPU). However, electronics systems are limited with respect to power dissipation and delay, due to wire-charging challenges related to interconnect capacitance. Here we present a silicon photonics-based architecture for convolutional neural networks that harnesses the phase property of light to perform FFTs efficiently by executing the convolution as a multiplication in the Fourier-domain. The algorithmic executing time is determined by the time-of-flight of the signal through this photonic reconfigurable passive FFT ‘filter’ circuit and is on the order of 10’s of picosecond short. A sensitivity analysis shows that this optical processor must be thermally phase stabilized corresponding to a few degrees. Furthermore, we find that for a small sample number, the obtainable number of convolutions per {time, power, and chip area) outperforms GPUs by about two orders of magnitude. Lastly, we show that, conceptually, the optical FFT and convolution-processing performance is indeed directly linked to optoelectronic device-level, and improvements in plasmonics, metamaterials or nanophotonics are fueling next generation densely interconnected intelligent photonic circuits with relevance for edge-computing 5G networks by processing tensor operations optically.

A metasurface is a layer of subwavelength-scale nanostructures that can be used to design functional devices in ultrathin form. Various metasurface-based optical devices – coined as flat optics devices – have been realized with distinction performances in research laboratories using electron beam lithography. To make such devices mass producible at low cost, metasurfaces over a large area have also been defined with lithography steppers and scanners, which are commonly used in semiconductor foundries. This work reviews the metasurface process platforms and functional devices fabricated using complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor-compatible mass manufacturing technologies. Taking both fine critical dimension and mass production into account, the platforms developed at the Institute of Microelectronics (IME), A*STAR using advanced 12-inch immersion lithography have been presented with details, including process flow and demonstrated optical functionalities. These developed platforms aim to drive the flat optics from lab to fab.

Plasmons, as emerging optical diffraction-unlimited information carriers, promise the high-capacity, high-speed, and integrated photonic chips. The on-chip precise manipulations of plasmon in an arbitrary platform, whether two-dimensional (2D) or one-dimensional (1D), appears demanding but non-trivial. Here, we proposed a meta-wall, consisting of specifically designed meta-atoms, that allows the high-efficiency transformation of propagating plasmon polaritons from 2D platforms to 1D plasmonic waveguides, forming the trans-dimensional plasmonic routers. The mechanism to compensate the momentum transformation in the router can be traced via a local dynamic phase gradient of the meta-atom and reciprocal lattice vector. To demonstrate such a scheme, a directional router based on phase-gradient meta-wall is designed to couple 2D SPP to a 1D plasmonic waveguide, while a unidirectional router based on grating metawall is designed to route 2D SPP to the arbitrarily desired direction along the 1D plasmonic waveguide by changing the incident angle of 2D SPP. The on-chip routers of trans-dimensional SPP demonstrated here provide a flexible tool to manipulate propagation of surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) and may pave the way for designing integrated plasmonic network and devices.

Thermal camouflage, which is used to conceal objects in the infrared vision for confrontation with infrared detection in civilian or military applications, has garnered increasing attraction and interest recently. Compared with conductive thermal camouflage, that is to tune heat conduction to achieve equivalent temperature fields, radiative thermal camouflage, based on emissivity engineering, is more promising and shows much superiority in the pursuit of dynamic camouflage technology when resorting to stimuli-responsive materials. In this paper, we demonstrate the emissivity-engineered radiative metasurface to realize dynamic thermal camouflage functionality via a flying laser heat source on the metal-liquid-crystal-metal (MLCM) platform. We employ a rigorous coupled-wave algorithm to calculate the surface emissivity of Au/LC/Au microstructures, where the LC-orientation angle distribution is quantified by minimizing the emitted thermal energy standard deviation throughout the whole plate. Emissivity engineering on the MCLM platform is attributed to multiple magnetic polariton resonance, and agrees well with the equivalent electric circuit analysis. Through this electrical modulation strategy, the moving hot spot in the original temperature field is erased and a uniform temperature field is observed in the infrared camera instead, demonstrating the very good dynamic thermal camouflage functionality. The present MLCM-based radiative metasurface may open avenues for high-resolution emissivity engineering to realize novel thermal functionality and develop new applications for thermal metamaterials and meta-devices.

Regarded as a kind of smart surfaces, metasurfaces can arbitrarily tailor the amplitude, phase, and polarization of light. Metasurfaces usually consist of subwavelength nanoantenna or nanoresonator arrays, which are delicately designed and processed. As an ultrathin, miniaturized versatile wavefront modulation device, metasurfaces have great information capacity and can arouse the future development of highly integrated micronano optoelectronic systems. Exploiting the advantages of ultrasmall pixels, flexible design freedom, low loss, and easy processing properties, metasurfaces provide potential feasibility and new perspectives for a plethora of applications. Here we review the research progress of metasurfaces for holographic displays, polarization conversion, active modulation, linear and nonlinear wavefront modulation, and prospect the future development trend of metasurfaces.

Fano resonance, one of the interesting resonance phenomena in physics, provides versatile applications when combined with a concept of metasurface in nanophotonics. Fano-resonant metasurface (FRM) is attracting a lot of attention due to its superior narrowband characteristics as well as design freedom of metasurfaces in nanoscale. However, only the control of apparent asymmetric spectral nature of Fano resonance has been focused at applications such as optical sensors, as the amplitude feature of Fano resonances is relatively easy to control and can be measured by an experimental setup. Here, a method for modulating the phase information of FRM by both simulation and experiment is demonstrated. As a proof of concept, an optical demultiplexer, which can divide four target wavelengths in different directions of free space, is verified experimentally. It covers a broadband wavelength range of more than 350 nm in the near-infrared region with extremely small full-width at half-maximum. This approach can offer the complete control of FRM for a wide range of applications, including optical multiplexers, routers, filters, and switches, beyond conventional applications that have been limited to the amplitude control of Fano resonance.

Self-similar fractals provide a degree of freedom for varying the resonance frequency due to the multiscale geometric features involved and are an ideal candidate for ultrabroadband absorbing devices – especially in the terahertz (THz) band where there is a lack of natural absorbing materials. Metasurface-based THz absorbers often suffer from poor broadband performance, whereas strongly absorbing broadband devices are typically complex multilayer structures. Here, we numerically demonstrate an ultrabroadband, ultrathin, polarization-insensitive, wide-angle, single-layer planar metasurface THz absorber by integrating different Cayley tree fractal resonators into one supercell based on the frequency shifting and multiresonance bands of different fractal orders. In terms of physics, we have exploited the self-similar nature of fractal geometry to engineer the multimodal spectrum of this system. With increasing fractal order N, an increasing number of modes can be excited with certain degeneracies where each mode corresponds to plasmon oscillations at different geometric scales inside fractal. As a result, broad, multipeaked spectra with large degeneracy numbers can be achieved with larger N. Finally, by placing fractals of different order N into one supercell, the coupling and superposition of the neighboring resonances exhibit the desired ultrabroadband response. The proposed absorber provides a wide incident wave angle with a full-width half-maximum absorption bandwidth of more than one octave, i.e. 3.88 THz. Greater than 80% absorption is achieved over a frequency range of 3 THz. Owing to its performance, this work is a step forward in realizing perfect blackbody absorbers that can be easily integrated with bolometric sensing technology to make high-efficient THz-sensing devices.

A high-efficiency reconfigurable element for dynamic metasurface antennas (DMA), consisting of a complimentary electric-LC (CELC) resonator fed through the cavity from a waveguide slot, is proposed in this paper, with positive- intrinsic-negative (PIN) diodes loaded to realize the coding performance. To begin with, the low efficiency problem of a traditional CELC element is demonstrated before the introduction of the proposed element. Subsequently, an equivalent circuit is illustrated to analyse the resonant performance, with extensive parametric study for verification. The proposed element has a low ohmic loss when the diode is switched on, 25 times less than the traditional element. Furthermore, the radiation efficiency of a DMA with 10 proposed elements is compared with a traditional design, showing a significant efficiency improvement from 25% to 75% when half diodes are switched on. Finally, measurements are conducted to verify the feasibility of the dynamic element to achieve radiation ON and OFF states, showing a 12 dB radiation gain difference between two states.

Energy harvesting (EH) or scavenging is recognized as harvesting energy from ambient energy sources in the surrounding environment. This paper reports a literature review on radio frequency (RF) EH using different metasurface/metamaterial structures based on split-ring resonators (SRRs), electric inductive-capacitive (ELC) resonators, square-patch unit cells, square-ring unit cells, etc. The essential parameters in rectifying antenna (rectenna) design are included, such as receiving antenna efficiency, conversion efficiency, dimensions, supporting substrate properties, frequency band, and overall performance, etc. It is noted that rectenna design using conventional antennas such as microstrip antennas, monopole antennas, slot antennas, dielectric resonator antennas, etc. suffers from low power conversion efficiency with larger size. To overcome the above-mentioned constraints and enhance the conversion efficiency with smaller size, metasurface/metamaterial structures are used as EH collectors. An introduction to EH is discussed, followed by an overview of energy sources in the ambient environment. Several hypothetical and experimental studies on metasurface-based EH systems are summarized. Published version

A broadband metasurface antenna with a novel hexagonal loop-shaped unit cell structure is presented. A hexagonal loop element array is proposed as the main metasurface radiator, which is aperture-fed through a microstrip line and a coupling slot. The bandwidth can be broadened from two perspectives. On the one hand, the proposed hexagonal loop element is capable of generating broadband radiating bandwidth. On the other hand, due to the shape of the hexagonal loop structure, gaps between unit cells lead to a larger equivalent capacitance. This larger capacitance significantly pulls the fundamental resonant frequency downward, compared with conventional square structures, consequently leading to the broad bandwidth. In the design, the broadband performance is achieved by utilizing five TM modes at five resonant frequencies in the operational band from 4.65 GHz to 8.3 GHz. Apart from the fundamental TM01 mode, only TM12 modes were excited in different parts of the metasurface layer at different frequencies. This has ensured that the proposed antenna can maintain a stable radiation pattern in the desired band. The operation of the proposed antenna is analyzed in detail. The proposed hexagonal metasurface antenna with an overall size of 1.1 λ0 × 1.1 λ0 × 0.06 λ0 can achieve 56.3% fractional bandwidth and a gain ranging from 7 to 11 dBi, which can be employed in satellite, radar, and wireless communication systems.

This paper presents simulation and measurement results of a wideband planar phased array for 5G. The desired wideband operation is achieved using a tightly coupled dipole array (TCDA). The proposed array consists of tightly coupled dipole units in dual-polarized configuration, and two thin parasitic layers separated apart by air gap for wide-angle impedance matching (WAIM). The top matching layer is loaded with a metasurface composed of sub-wavelength split-ring resonators (SRRs) to improve the scanning performance of array. The infinite array achieved a bandwidth from 23.5 to 29.5 GHz, with voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) l, and it exhibits high gains, high efficiency > 71% (largest scan angle) and good cross-polarization. The simulations are validated by fabrication and measurement of an array prototype, which indicates agreement to simulated values. The proposed dual-polarized antenna array can be deployed in the future beam scanning applications for 5G.

Wireless power transfer (WPT), a convenient method for powering multiple devices, enables a truly wireless connection, eliminating the need for periodic charging and replacing a battery. To further enhance WPT, the unique characteristics of metamaterial, such as its field focusing and evanescent wave amplification, have been successfully utilized. With subwavelength characteristics, computational challenges arise when the number of metamaterial unit cells is increased. In this work, we investigate a deep neural network (DNN)-based design of the tunable metamaterial for WPT. Using structures specifically designed for different tasks, the DNN predicts the frequency spectra and synthesizes the unit cell's design parameters. When trained using a set of ~23000 randomly selected designs, we achieve an accumulated mean square error (MSE) of less than 1.5× 10-3 for 97.3% of the 1929 test set. For synthesizing the unit cell's design parameters, the MSE is less than 2.5 × 10-3 for 95.7% of the test set. The data-driven method is further extended to a generative adversarial network (GAN) to create the WPT paths and predict the frequency spectra of them. To achieve high efficiency, we propose a cost function focusing on the spectra's transmission peak. After training using 80 000 measured data, the GAN can create WPT paths that efficiently connect the transmitter and the receiver on the metasurface. The results show that the DNN provides an alternative and efficient design method for the metamaterial, replacing traditional EM-simulation-based approaches.