Nonlocal, Flat-Band Meta-Optics for Monolithic, High-Efficiency, Compact Photodetectors.

Miniaturized photodetectors are becoming increasingly sought-after components for next-generation technologies, such as autonomous vehicles, integrated wearable devices, or gadgets embedded on the Internet of Things. A major challenge, however, lies in shrinking the device footprint while maintaining high efficiency. This conundrum can be solved by realizing a nontrivial relation between the energy and momentum of photons, such as dispersion-free devices, known as flat bands. Here, we leverage flat-band meta-optics to simultaneously achieve critical absorption over a wide range of incidence angles. For a monolithic silicon meta-optical photodiode, we achieved an ∼10-fold enhancement in the photon-to-electron conversion efficiency. Such enhancement over a large angular range of ∼36° allows incoming light to be collected via a large-aperture lens and focused on a compact photodiode, potentially enabling high-speed and low-light operation. Our research unveils new possibilities for creating compact and efficient optoelectronic devices with far-reaching impact on various applications, including augmented reality and light detection and ranging.

On-Chip Meta-Optics for Engineering Arbitrary Trajectories with Longitudinal Polarization Variation.

On-chip integrated meta-optics promise to achieve high-performance and compact integrated photonic devices. To arbitrarily engineer the optical trajectory along the propagation path in an on-chip integrated scheme is of significance in fundamental physics and various emerging applications. Here, we experimentally demonstrate an on-chip metasurface integrated on a waveguide to enable predefined arbitrary optical trajectories in the visible regime. By transformation of the transverse phase to generate longitudinal mapping, the guided waves are extracted and molded into any different optical trajectories (parabola, hyperbola, and cosine). More intriguingly, predefined polarization states with longitudinal variation are also successfully imparted along the trajectory. Owing to the on-chip propagation scheme, the trajectories are uniquely free from zero-order diffraction interference, naturally having a higher signal-to-noise ratio beyond conventional free-space forms. Overall, such on-chip optical trajectory engineering allows for miniaturized integration and can find paths in potential applications of complex optical manipulation, advanced laser fabrication, and microscopic imaging.

Exciton-Enabled Meta-Optics in Two-Dimensional Transition Metal Dichalcogenides.

Optical wavefront engineering has been rapidly developing in fundamentals from phase accumulation in the optical path to the electromagnetic resonances of confined nanomodes in optical metasurfaces. However, the amplitude modulation of light has limited approaches that usually originate from the ohmic loss and absorptive dissipation of materials. Here, an atomically thin photon-sieve platform made of MoS2 multilayers is demonstrated for high-quality optical nanodevices, assisted fundamentally by strong excitonic resonances at the band-nesting region of MoS2. The atomic thin MoS2 significantly facilitates high transmission of the sieved photons and high-fidelity nanofabrication. A proof-of-concept two-dimensional (2D) nanosieve hologram exhibits 10-fold enhanced efficiency compared with its non-2D counterparts. Furthermore, a supercritical 2D lens with its focal spot breaking diffraction limit is developed to exhibit experimentally far-field label-free aberrationless imaging with a resolution of ∼0.44λ at λ = 450 nm in air. This transition-metal-dichalcogenide (TMDC) photonic platform opens new opportunities toward future 2D meta-optics and nanophotonics.

Atomically Thin Noble Metal Dichalcogenides for Phase-Regulated Meta-optics.

Owing to its good air stability and high refractive index, two-dimensional (2D) noble metal dichalcogenide shows intriguing potential for versatile flat optics applications. However, light field manipulation at the atomic scale is conventionally considered unattainable because the small thickness and intrinsic losses of 2D materials completely suppress both resonances and phase accumulation effects. Here, we demonstrate that losses of structured atomically thick PtSe2 films integrated on top of a uniform substrate can be utilized to create the spots of critical coupling, enabling singular phase behaviors with a remarkable π phase jump. This finding enables the experimental demonstration of atomically thick binary meta-optics that allows an angle-robust and high unit thickness diffraction efficiency of 0.96%/nm in visible frequencies (given its thickness of merely 4.3 nm). Our results unlock the potential of a new class of 2D flat optics for light field manipulation at an atomic thickness.

Visible Meta-Displays for Anti-Counterfeiting with Printable Dielectric Metasurfaces.

Metasurfaces, 2D arrays of nanostructures, have gained significant attention in recent years due to their ability to manipulate light at the subwavelength scale. Their diverse applications range from advanced optical devices to sensing and imaging technologies. However, the mass production of dielectric metasurfaces with tailored properties for visible light has remained a challenge. Therefore, the demand for efficient and cost-effective fabrication methods for metasurfaces has driven the continuing development of various techniques. In this research article, a high-throughput production method is presented for multifunctional dielectric metasurfaces in the visible light range using one-step high-index TiO2-polymer composite (TPC) printing, which is a variant of nanoprinting lithography (NIL) for the direct replication of patterned multifunctional dielectric metasurfaces using a TPC material as the printing ink. The batch fabrication of dielectric metasurfaces is demonstrated with controlled geometry and excellent optical response, enabling high-performance light-matter interactions for potential applications of visible meta-displays.

Advances in Meta-Optics and Metasurfaces: Fundamentals and Applications.

Meta-optics based on metasurfaces that interact strongly with light has been an active area of research in recent years. The development of meta-optics has always been driven by human's pursuits of the ultimate miniaturization of optical elements, on-demand design and control of light beams, and processing hidden modalities of light. Underpinned by meta-optical physics, meta-optical devices have produced potentially disruptive applications in light manipulation and ultra-light optics. Among them, optical metalens are most fundamental and prominent meta-devices, owing to their powerful abilities in advanced imaging and image processing, and their novel functionalities in light manipulation. This review focuses on recent advances in the fundamentals and applications of the field defined by excavating new optical physics and breaking the limitations of light manipulation. In addition, we have deeply explored the metalenses and metalens-based devices with novel functionalities, and their applications in computational imaging and image processing. We also provide an outlook on this active field in the end.

Recent Developments of Femtosecond Laser Direct Writing for Meta-Optics.

Micro-optics based on the artificial adjustment of physical dimensions, such as the phase, polarization, and wavelength of light, constitute the basis of contemporary information optoelectronic technology. As the main means of optical integration, it has become one of the important ways to break through the future bottleneck of microelectronic technology. Geometric phase optical components can precisely control the polarization, phase, amplitude and other properties of the light field at the sub-wavelength scale by periodically arranging nanometer-sized unit structures. It has received extensive attention in the fields of holographic imaging and polarization optics. This paper reviews the physical mechanism of micro-nano structure modification, research progress of femtosecond laser direct-writing photoresist, femtosecond laser ablation of metal thin films, femtosecond laser-induced nanograting, and other methods for preparing polarization converters and geometric phase optics. The challenges of fabricating ultrafast optical devices using femtosecond laser technology are discussed.

Recent Advances in Tunable Metasurfaces and Their Application in Optics.

Metasurfaces can be opportunely and specifically designed to manipulate electromagnetic wavefronts. In recent years, a large variety of metasurface-based optical devices such as planar lenses, beam deflectors, polarization converters, and so on have been designed and fabricated. Of particular interest are tunable metasurfaces, which allow the modulation of the optical response of a metasurface; for instance, the variation in the focal length of a converging metalens. Response tunability can be achieved through external sources that modify the permittivity of the materials constituting the nanoatoms, the substrate, or both. The modulation sources can be classified into electromagnetic fields, thermal sources, mechanical stressors, and electrical bias. Beside this, we will consider optical modulation and multiple approach tuning strategies. A great variety of tunable materials have been used in metasurface engineering, such as transparent conductive oxides, ferroelectrics, phase change materials, liquid crystals, and semiconductors. The possibility of tuning the optical properties of these metamaterials is very important for several applications spanning from basic optics to applied optics for communications, depth sensing, holographic displays, and biochemical sensors. In this review, we summarize the recent progress on electro-optical magnetic, mechanical, and thermal tuning of metasurfaces actually fabricated and experimentally tested in recent years. At the end of the review, a short section on possible future perspectives and applications is included.

Meta-Optics-Empowered Switchable Integrated Mode Converter Based on the Adjoint Method.

Monolithic integrated mode converters with high integration are essential to photonic integrated circuits (PICs), and they are widely used in next-generation optical communications and complex quantum systems. It is expected that PICs will become more miniaturized, multifunctional, and intelligent with the development of micro/nano-technology. The increase in design space makes it difficult to realize high-performance device design based on traditional parameter sweeping or heuristic design, especially in the optimal design of reconfigurable PIC devices. Combining the mode coupling theory and adjoint calculation method, we proposed a design method for a switchable mode converter. The device could realize the transmission of TE0 mode and the conversion from TE0 to TE1 mode with a footprint of 0.9 × 7.5 µm2 based on the phase change materials (PCMs). We also found that the mode purity could reach 78.2% in both states at the working wavelength of 1.55 µm. The designed method will provide a new impetus for programmable photonic integrated devices and find broad application prospects in communication, optical neural networks, and sensing.

Compound Meta-Optics for Complete and Loss-Less Field Control.

Optical metasurfaces offer a compact platform for manipulation of the amplitude, phase, and polarization state of light. Independent control over these properties, however, is hindered by the symmetric transmission matrix associated with single-layer metasurfaces. Here, we utilize multilayer birefringent meta-optics to realize high-efficiency, independent control over the amplitude, phase, and polarization state of light. High-efficiency control is enabled by redistributing the wavefront between cascaded metasurfaces, while end-to-end inverse design is used to realize independent complex-valued functions for orthogonal polarization states. Based on this platform, we demonstrate spatial mode division multiplexing, optical mode conversion, and universal vectorial holograms, all with diffraction efficiencies over 80%. This meta-optic platform expands the design space of flat optics and could lead to advances in optical communications, quantum entanglement, and information encryption.

Chemical Vapor Deposition of Spherical Amorphous Selenium Mie Resonators for Infrared Meta-Optics.

Applying direct growth and deposition of optical surfaces holds great promise for the advancement of future nanophotonic technologies. Here, we report on a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technique for depositing amorphous selenium (a-Se) spheres by desorption of selenium from Bi2Se3 and re-adsorption on the substrate. We utilize this process to grow scalable, large area Se spheres on several substrates and characterize their Mie-resonant response in the mid-infrared (MIR) spectral range. We demonstrate size-tunable Mie resonances spanning the 2-16 µm spectral range for single isolated resonators and large area ensembles. We further demonstrate strong absorption dips of up to 90% in ensembles of particles in a broad MIR range. Finally, we show that ultra-high-Q resonances arise in the case where Se Mie-resonators are coupled to low-loss epsilon-near-zero (ENZ) substrates. These findings demonstrate the enabling potential of amorphous Selenium as a versatile and tunable nanophotonic material that may open up avenues for on-chip MIR spectroscopy, chemical sensing, spectral imaging, and large area metasurface fabrication.

Single-Cell-Driven Tri-Channel Encryption Meta-Displays.

Multi-functional metasurfaces have attracted great attention due to the significant possibilities to realize highly integrated and ultra-compact meta-devices. Merging nano-printing and holographic information multiplexing is one of the effective ways to achieve multi-functionality, and such a merger can increase the information encoding capacity. However, the current approaches rely on stacking layers and interleaving, where multiple resonators effectively combine different functionalities on the cost of efficiency, design complexity, and challenging fabrication. To address such challenges, a single meta-nanoresonator-based tri-functional metasurface is proposed by combining the geometric phase-based spin-decoupling and Malus's law intensity modulation. The proposed strategy effectively improves information capacity owing to the orientation degeneracy of spin-decoupling rather than layer stacking or super-cell designs. To validate the proposed strategy, a metasurface demonstrating two helicity-dependent holographic outputs is presented in far-field, whereas a continuous nano-printing image is in near-field. It is also employed on CMOS-compatible and cost-effective hydrogen amorphous silicon providing transparent responses for the whole visible band. As a result, the proposed metasurface has high transmission efficiency in the visible regime and verifies the design strategy without adding extra complexities to conventional nano-pillar geometry. Therefore, the proposed metasurface opens new avenues in multi-functional meta-devices design and has promising applications in anti-counterfeiting, optical storage and displays.​.

Scalable Light-Printing of Substrate-Engraved Free-Form Metasurfaces.

A key challenge for metasurface research is locally controlling at will the nanoscale geometric features on meter-scale apertures. Such a technology is expected to enable large aperture meta-optics and revolutionize fields such as long-range imaging, lasers, laser detection and ranging (LADAR), and optical communications. Furthermore, these applications are often more sensitive to light-induced and environmental degradation, which constrains the possible materials and fabrication process. Here, we present a relatively simple and scalable method to fabricate a substrate-engraved metasurface with locally printed index determined by induced illumination, which, therefore, addresses both the challenges of scalability and durability. In this process, a thin metal film is deposited onto a substrate and transformed into a mask via local laser-induced dewetting into nanoparticles. The substrate is then dry-etched through this mask, and selective mask removal finally reveals the metasurface. We show that masking by the local nanoparticle distribution, and, therefore, the local index, is dependent on the local light-induced dewetting temperature. We demonstrate printing of a free-form pattern engraved into a fused silica glass substrate using a laser raster scan. Large-scale spatially controlled engraving of metasurfaces has implications on other technological fields beyond optics, such as surface fluidics, acoustics, and thermomechanics.

Meta-optics and bound states in the continuum.

We discuss the recent advances in meta-optics and nanophotonics associated with the physics of bound states in the continuum (BICs). Such resonant states appear due to a strong coupling between leaky modes in optical guiding structures being supported by subwavelength high-index dielectric Mie-resonant nanoantennas or all-dielectric metasurfaces. First, we review briefly very recent developments in the BIC physics in application to isolated subwavelength particles. We pay a special attention to novel opportunities for nonlinear nanophotonics due to the large field enhancement inside the particle volume creating the resonant states with high-quality (high-Q) factors, the so-called quasi-BIC, that can be supported by the subwavelength particles. Second, we discuss novel applications of the BIC physics to all-dielectric optical metasurfaces with broken-symmetry meta-atoms when tuning to the BIC conditions allows to enhance substantially the Q factor of the flat-optics dielectric structures. We also present the original results on nonlinear high-Q metasurfaces and predict that the frequency conversion efficiency can be boosted dramatically by smart engineering of the asymmetry parameter of dielectric metasurfaces in the vicinity of the quasi-BIC regime.

Complex Inverse Design of Meta-optics by Segmented Hierarchical Evolutionary Algorithm.

With the recent burgeoning advances in nano-optics, ultracompact, miniaturized photonic devices with high-quality and spectacular functionalities are highly desired. Such devices' design paradigms often call for the solution of a complex inverse nonanalytical/semianalytical problem. However, currently reported strategies dealing with amplitude-controlled meta-optics devices achieved limited functionalities mainly due to restricted search space and demanding computational schemes. Here, we established a segmented hierarchical evolutionary algorithm, aiming to solve large-pixelated, complex inverse meta-optics design and fully demonstrate the targeted performance. This paradigm allows significantly extended search space at a rapid converging speed. As typical complex proof-of-concept examples, large-pixelated meta-holograms are chosen to demonstrate the validity of our design paradigm. An improved fitness function is proposed to reinforce the performance balance among image pixels, so that the image quality is improved and computing speed is further accelerated. Broadband and full-color meta-holograms with high image fidelities using binary amplitude control are demonstrated experimentally. Our work may find important applications in the advanced design of future nanoscale high-quality optical devices.