Broadband High-Efficiency Chiral Splitters and Holograms from Dielectric Nanoarc Metasurfaces

Small. 2019 May;15(20):e1900483. doi: 10.1002/smll.201900483. Epub 2019 Apr 15.

Abstract

Simultaneous broadband and high efficiency merits of designer metasurfaces are currently attracting widespread attention in the field of nanophotonics. However, contemporary metasurfaces rarely achieve both advantages simultaneously. For the category of transmissive metadevices, plasmonic or conventional dielectric metasurfaces are viable for either broadband operation with relatively low efficiency or high efficiency at only a selection of wavelengths. To overcome this limitation, dielectric nanoarcs are proposed as a means to accomplish two advantages. Continuous nanoarcs support different electromagnetic resonant modes at localized areas for generating phase retardation. Meanwhile, the geometric nature of nanoarc curvature endows the nanoarcs with full phase coverage of 0-2π due to the Pancharatnam-Berry phase principle. Experimentally incorporated with the chiral-detour phase principle, a few compelling functionalities are demonstrated, such as chiral beamsplitting, broadband holography, and helicity-selective holography. The continuous nanoarc metasurfaces prevail over plasmonic or dielectric discretized building block strategies and the findings lead to novel designs of spin-controllable metadevices.

Keywords: Pancharatnam-Berry (PB) phase; chiral beamsplitting; chiral-detour phase; dielectric metasurfaces; holograms.