Ultraviolet-Visible Multifunctional Vortex Metaplates by Breaking Conventional Rotational Symmetry

Nano Lett. 2023 Feb 22;23(4):1195-1201. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c04193. Epub 2023 Jan 9.

Abstract

Metasurfaces have shown remarkable potential to manipulate many of light's intrinsic properties, such as phase, amplitude, and polarization. Recent advancements in nanofabrication technologies and persistent efforts from the research community result in the realization of highly efficient, broadband, and multifunctional metasurfaces. Simultaneous control of these characteristics in a single-layered metasurface will be an apparent technological extension. Here, we demonstrate a broadband multifunctional metasurface platform with the unprecedented ability to independently control the phase profile for two orthogonal polarization states of incident light over dual-wavelength spectra (ultraviolet to visible). In this work, multiple single-layered metasurfaces composed of bandgap-engineered silicon nitride nanoantennas are designed, fabricated, and optically characterized to demonstrate broadband multifunctional light manipulation ability, including structured beam generation and meta-interferometer implementation. We envision the presented metasurface platform opening new avenues for broadband multifunctional applications including ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy, spatially modulated illumination microscopy, optical data storage, and information encoding.

Keywords: broadband; metaplates; multifunctional; orbital angular momentum; rotational symmetry; structured beams.