Advancing broadband light structuring through single-size nanostructured all-dielectric meta-devices

Abstract

Traditional optical components and most artificially engineered structures (metamaterials) used for light manipulation are usually designed for narrow bandwidth and limited functionalities. Furthermore, bulkiness and inefficiency limit their application for integrated devices. Metasurfaces, the ultracompact counterpart of bulky metamaterials, exhibit an unprecedented ability to manipulate incident electromagnetic waves at a micron scale. Metasurfaces have emerged as promising candidates for light structuring and its potential applications, ranging from high-capacity data communication to particle manipulation. Despite significant advancement in metasurfaces, realizing high-performance metadevices exhibiting a broadband light manipulation capability is still challenging due to the material's intrinsic nature and lack of a more straightforward design methodology. Here, we demonstrated a broadband single-cell driven all-dielectric metadevice platform to realize high-performance phase modulation for light structuring over the broad visible spectrum475−650nm. The building block consists of an intelligently optimized nanoantenna made of unique zinc sulfide material that employs the PB phase to realize single-layered broadband metadevices for structured light generation, ensuring a decent average transmission efficiency ηavg=79.9% over the intended band. To prove the concept, we designed numerous metadevices for structured light generation and numerically investigated each under the illumination of selected visible wavelengths. We envisioned that the presented work could accelerate real-life applications such as high-resolution color imaging, optical communication and sensing, quantum information processing, and micromanipulation.