Digital printing of optical metasurface

Vejleder:

Xiaolong Zhu, DTU Nanotech (5038 7068, xizhu@nanotech.dtu.dk)

Optical metasurfaces provide new means for manipulation of optical fields with the aid of structural resonances and/or artificial birefringence that can alter amplitude, phase and polarization over subwavelength distances. Metasurfaces harvest from subwavelength structures being metallic, dielectric or hybrid combinations. For instance, metasurfaces allow the miniaturization of conventional refractive optics into planar structures, which will potentially revolute the traditional optical devices into smaller sizes in imaging, observing and detecting.

As a new paradigm, we use pulsed-laser irradiation which generates transient thermal power in these metasurfaces that melts and reshapes structures. Depending on the laser pulse energy density, different surface morphologies arise. These support optical resonances, which in turn lead to different amplitude and phase configrations.

In this project, we are going to laser print functional optical devices digitally onto planar metasurfaces, such as diffraction gratings, zone plates or polarization converters. By accumulating knowledge on these basic optical components, we are going to laser print optical metasurfaces for generating complex optical phenomenon, such as hologram, cloaking and so on in the further stage of this project.