All‐Dielectric Programmable Huygens' Metasurfaces

Low‐loss nanostructured dielectric metasurfaces have emerged as a breakthrough platform for ultrathin optics and cutting‐edge photonic applications, including beam shaping, focusing, and holography. However, the static nature of their constituent materials has traditionally limited them to fixed functionalities. Tunable all‐dielectric infrared Huygens' metasurfaces consisting of multi‐layer Ge disk meta‐units with strategically incorporated non‐volatile phase change material Ge₃Sb₂Te₆ are introduced. Switching the phase‐change material between its amorphous and crystalline structural state enables nearly full dynamic light phase control with high transmittance in the mid‐IR spectrum. The metasurface is realized experimentally, showing post‐fabrication tuning of the light phase within a range of 81% of the full 2π phase shift. Additionally, the versatility of the tunable Huygen's metasurfaces is demonstrated by optically programming the spatial light phase distribution of the metasurface with single meta‐unit precision and retrieving high‐resolution phase‐encoded images using hyperspectral measurements. The programmable metasurface concept overcomes the static limitations of previous dielectric metasurfaces, paving the way for “universal” metasurfaces and highly efficient, ultracompact active optical elements like tunable lenses, dynamic holograms, and spatial light modulators.     

Mie‐Resonant Membrane Huygens' Metasurfaces

All‐dielectric metasurfaces have become a new paradigm for flat optics as they allow flexible engineering of the electromagnetic space of propagating waves. Such metasurfaces are usually composed of individual subwavelength elements embedded into a host medium or placed on a substrate, which often diminishes the quality of the resonances. The substrate imposes limitations on the metasurface functionalities, especially for infrared and terahertz frequencies. Here a novel concept of membrane Huygens' metasurfaces is introduced. The metasurfaces feature an inverted design, and they consist of arrays of holes made in a thin membrane of high‐index dielectric material, with the response governed by the electric and magnetic Mie resonances excited within dielectric domains of the membrane. Highly efficient transmission combined with the 2π phase coverage in the freestanding membranes is demonstrated. Several functional metadevices for wavefront control are designed, including beam deflector, a lens, and an axicon. Such membrane metasurfaces provide novel opportunities for efficient large‐area metadevices, whose advanced functionality is defined by structuring rather than by chemical composition.     

Nonlinear THz-Nano Metasurfaces

Extreme terahertz (THz) science and technologies, the next disruptive frontier in nonlinear optics, provide multifaceted capabilities for exploring strong light-matter interactions in a variety of physical systems. However, current techniques involve the need for an extremely high-field free space THz source that is difficult to generate and has limited investigations to a rather weak and linear regime of light-matter interactions. Therefore, new approaches are being sought for the tight confinement of THz waves that can induce nonlinear effects. Here, a nonlinear “tera-nano” metasurface is demonstrated exhibiting extremely large THz nonlinearity and sensitive self-modulation of resonances at moderate incident THz field strengths. A record deep-subwavelength (≈λ/33 000) confinement of strongly enhanced (^≈3200) THz field in a nano-gap (15 nm) exhibits remarkable THz field-tailored nonlinearity. Further, ultrafast injection of photocarriers reveals a competition between nonlinear THz field-induced intervalley scattering and optically driven interband excitations. The results on “tera-nano” metasurfaces enable a novel platform to realize enhanced nonlinear nano/micro composites for field-sensitive extreme THz nonlinear applications without the need for intense THz light sources.     

基于超表面的远场多波束调控综述

超表面作为二维的的超材料,在保留其对电磁波调控能力的同时,具有剖面低、损耗小、易与其它器件集成的优点。自广义斯涅耳定律被提出以来,传统由透镜和棱镜等光学元件沿传播路径逐渐积累的相变方式开始被离散相位取代,极大地提升了超表面设计的灵活性。通过对超表面局部幅度和相位信息进行调控,可以改变入射波的传输方向,使其朝着不同方向传播。文章首先简要概述几种实现多波束激发的超表面平台,然后介绍了基于超表面平台对远场波束多波束调控的前沿进展,并对未来发展方向进行了展望。     

Polarization Modulation for Wireless Communications Based on Metasurfaces

As an alternative to conventional wireless communication techniques that use amplitude, frequency, and phase modulations, polarization modulation (PoM) provides an additional degree of freedom for the modulation of carrier waves and allows the realization of simple transceiver designs. PoM also enhances physical-layer security in wireless communication systems owing to its vector-attribute and direction-dependence features. In this study, a prototype of PoM wireless communications based on a digital coding metasurface that can dynamically control the polarization of electromagnetic waves in a certain frequency band is demonstrated. The binary digital signals can be encoded on the optical rotation states of the circularly polarized beams through the real-time control of the bias voltages applied on the metasurface and successfully decoded at the receiving end. Because the metasurface is separated from the emitting antenna, the design can simplify the setup for multichannel communications and provide more flexibility by setting the emitting antennas at different operating frequencies at any time.     

Radiation-Type Metasurfaces for Advanced Electromagnetic Manipulation

Manipulating the phase, polarization, and energy distribution of electromagnetic (EM) waves has facilitated numerous applications. Nowadays, metasurface provides an innovational scenario to carry out more promising and advanced control of EM waves. However, it is a great challenge to manipulate polarization, phase, and energy distribution simultaneously with a low profile. Herein, a class of single-layer radiation-type metasurfaces to achieve advanced EM manipulation is proposed. Desired EM functions can be achieved based on the geometric phase and resonant phase. Such metasurfaces enable the capability to manipulate arbitrary phases and linear polarization states simultaneously. Moreover, arbitrary energy distributions can be controlled. As examples of potential applications, three advanced EM functional devices are presented: a novel multiple-input multiple-output antenna with efficient crosstalk suppression and information encryption, an energy-controllable router, and a metasurface holographic imaging based on power transmission algorithm, respectively. The proposed strategy may open up an alternative way of controlling EM waves with advanced performance and minimalist complexity. Moreover, it may lead to advances in information encoding and cryptography.     

Multifunctional Dielectric Metasurfaces Consisting of Color Holograms Encoded into Color Printed Images

A hologram records the wavefront of light from an object, but it is usually not an image itself, and looks unintelligible under diffuse ambient light. Here a new paradigm to encode a color hologram onto a color printed image is experimentally demonstrated. The printed image can be directly viewed under white light illumination, while a low‐crosstalk color holographic image can be seen when the device is illuminated with red (R), green (G), and blue (B) laser beams. The device is a dielectric metasurface that consists of titanium dioxide (TiO₂) cones on a glass substrate. The dimensions of the TiO₂ cones are chosen to allow them to support visible‐wavelength resonances, thereby producing the desired reflection spectra and thus the color printed image. The detour phase method is furthermore used to encode the hologram into the metasurface. The approach is conceptually different from previously demonstrated color printed images or holograms and presents opportunities for optical document security and data storage applications.     

Multiplexed Nondiffracting Nonlinear Metasurfaces

Metasurfaces and planar photonic nanostructures have drawn great interest from the optical scientific community due to their diverse abilities of manipulating electromagnetic waves and high integration. Most metasurfaces launch diffracting waves, and thus suffer from divergence, short working distance, and instability. Although much effort has been devoted to researching nondiffracting metasurfaces which can launch electromagnetic waves with constant transverse intensity profiles in free‐space propagation, the number of working channels is inherently limited as these meta‐devices are implemented in the linear optical regime. Here, the multiplexed nondiffracting nonlinear metasurfaces are theoretically proposed and experimentally realized, which can generate the representative nondiffracting Bessel beam and Airy beam. Three Bessel beams with different numerical apertures and topological charges and three Airy beams with different propagation curves and focal lengths can be generated by a combination of different spins and wavelengths. The complex properties of the nondiffracting beams can be designed and detected in a more comprehensive and concise way with Fourier analysis. This proof‐of‐concept represents a new strategy for realizing multiplexed nondiffracting metasurfaces with advantages of ultracompactness, high‐pixelation, and easy integration and paves the way for multi‐channel optical communication and manipulation.     

Plasmonic Metasurfaces for Simultaneous Thermal Infrared Invisibility and Holographic Illusion

In 1860s, Gustav Kirchhoff proposed his famous law of thermal radiation, setting a fundamental contradiction between the infrared reflection and thermal radiation. Here, for the first time an ultrathin plasmonic metasurface is proposed to simultaneously produce ultralow specular reflection and infrared emission across a broad spectrum and wide incident angle range by combining the low emission nature of metal and the photonic spin–orbit interaction in spatially inhomogeneous structures. As a proof‐of‐concept, a phase gradient metasurface composed of sub‐wavelength metal gratings is designed and experimentally characterized in the infrared atmosphere window of 8–14 µm, demonstrating an ultralow specular reflectivity and infrared emissivity below 0.1. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that infrared illusion could be generated by the metasurface, enabling not only invisibility for thermal and laser detection, but also multifunctionalities for potential applications. This technology is also scalable across a wide range of electromagnetic spectrum and provides a feasible alternative for surface coating.     

High‐Performance Broadband Circularly Polarized Beam Deflector by Mirror Effect of Multinanorod Metasurfaces

Manipulation of light phase and amplitude by plasmonic metasurfaces has immensely promising applications in optical imaging, information processing, communications, and quantum optics. However, the controllability of efficiency and bandwidth is relatively low for the single‐layer metasurfaces. Here, a high efficiency and broadband circularly polarized (CP) beam deflector based on multirod single‐layer metasurfaces is presented. Each unit can be regarded as an imperfect polarizer, and the phase and amplitude induced by the mirror effect can be easily controlled. Owing to the plasmonic hybridization, the high efficiency and broadband characteristics of the proposed metasurfaces are theoretically and experimentally demonstrated. Meanwhile, an easy way to determine the polarization degree of the incident light based on Poincaré sphere is also proved by the multirod metasurfaces. Our work provides a simple alternative way to enhance the efficiency of CP anomalous light and thus has robust applications in nanophotonics and nanooptics.     

Tunable Metasurfaces Based on Active Materials

Metasurfaces, planer artificial materials composed of subwavelength unit cells, have shown superior abilities to manipulate the wavefronts of electromagnetic waves. In the last few years, metasurfaces have been a burgeoning field of research, with a large variety of functional devices, including planar lenses, beam deflectors, polarization converters, and metaholograms, being demonstrated. Up to date, the majority of metasurfaces cannot be tuned postfabrication. Yet, the dynamic control of optical properties of metasurfaces is highly desirable for a plethora of applications including free space optical communications, holographic displays, and depth sensing. Recently, much effort has been made to exploit active materials, whose optical properties can be controlled under external stimuli, for the dynamic control of metasurfaces. The tunability enabled by active materials can be attributed to various mechanisms, including but not limited to thermo‐optic effects, free‐carrier effects, and phase transitions. This short review summarizes the recent progress on tunable metasurfaces based on various approaches and analyzes their respective advantages and challenges to be confronted with. A number of potential future directions are also discussed at the end.     

Hybrid Metasurfaces of Plasmonic Lattices and 2D Materials

Plasmonic metasurfaces can significantly enhance the interaction between light and 2D materials. Hybrid structures of plasmonic lattices and 2D materials show great promise for both fundamental and practical studies because of their unprecedented ability for precise manipulation of light at the nanoscale. This review starts with an overview of the basic concepts of plasmonic lattices and optical properties of 2D materials, as well as fabrication strategies for hybrid metasurfaces. Then, the enhanced photoluminescence, quantum emission, optoelectronic detection, nonlinear process, and valleytronics in hybrid metasurfaces are summarized, and their development for nanophotonic functional devices are reviewed. Further, several compelling topics are also outlined that provide outlooks for future directions of hybrid metasurfaces such as novel structural design and high-quality fabrication, all-dielectric metasurfaces, dynamic metasurfaces, and plasmonic mediation of chemical reactions and physical processes. It is believed that hybrid metasurfaces of plasmonic lattices and 2D materials can open prospects for versatile platforms for light-matter interactions and contribute to the revolutions on nanophotonic devices.     

Reversible Thermal Tuning of All‐Dielectric Metasurfaces

All‐dielectric metasurfaces provide a powerful platform for a new generation of flat optical devices, in particular, for applications in telecommunication systems, due to their low losses and high transparency in the infrared. However, active and reversible tuning of such metasurfaces remains a challenge. This study experimentally demonstrates and theoretically justifies a novel scenario of the dynamical reversible tuning of all‐dielectric metasurfaces based on the temperature‐dependent change of the refractive index of silicon. How to design an all‐dielectric metasurface with sharp resonances by achieving interference between magnetic dipole and electric quadrupole modes of constituted nanoparticles arranged in a 2D lattice is shown. Thermal tuning of these resonances can cause drastic but reciprocal changes in the directional scattering of the metasurface in a spectral window of 75 nm. This change can result in a 50‐fold enhancement of the radiation directionality. This type of reversible tuning can play a significant role in novel flat optical devices including the metalenses and metaholograms.     

Simultaneous Control of Light Polarization and Phase Distributions Using Plasmonic Metasurfaces

Harnessing light for modern photonic applications often involves the control and manipulation of light polarization and phase. Traditional methods require a combination of multiple discrete optical components, each of which contributes to a specific functionality. Here, plasmonic metasurfaces are proposed that accomplish the simultaneous manipulation of polarization and phase of the transmitted light. Arbitrary spatial field distribution of the optical phase and polarization direction can be obtained. The multifunctional metasurfaces are validated by demonstrating a broadband near‐perfect anomalous refraction with controllable linear polarization through introducing a constant phase gradient along the interface. Furthermore, the power of the proposed metasurfaces is demonstrated by generating a radially polarized beam. The new degrees of freedom of metasurfaces facilitate arbitrary manipulation of light and will profoundly affect a wide range of photonic applications.     

基于变换光学的微波加热用超表面数值研究

由于单个微波源的功率值有限,工业上往往采用多源微波加热以满足大功率需求.然而,额外的微波馈口将增加端口间耦合,可能引起微波源损坏.因此,提出一种基于变换光学的新型超表面,使微波在进入加热腔体的方向上正常传播而在相反方向被阻挡,从而减少功率反射和耦合.在二维数值模型中,采用反向传播神经网络优化了超表面的介电性能,使得单源...