Cascaded metamaterial polarizers for the visible region

Opt Lett. 2020 Dec 15;45(24):6831-6834. doi: 10.1364/OL.411234.

Abstract

Polarizers serve many application fields such as imaging, display technology, and telecommunications. Focusing on the visible spectral region, we provide the design and fabrication of compact high-efficiency resonant polarizers in the crystalline silicon-on-quartz material system. We experimentally verify the improved efficiency attained by a cascaded dual-module polarizer assembled with building blocks of elemental subwavelength grating structures. We obtain a measured extinction ratio (ER) of ∼3000 in a 2 mm thick stacked prototype device across a bandwidth of ∼110nm in the 570-680 nm spectral domain. The ridge width of the constituent nanograting is ∼84nm. Computed results show a high ER in spite of the lossy nature of crystalline silicon in the visible region, enabling cascaded metasurfaces while preserving high transmission.