Large-Scale All-Dielectric Metamaterial Perfect Reflectors

Abstract

All-dielectric metamaterials offer a potential low-loss alternative to plasmonic metamaterials at optical frequencies. Here, we take advantage of the low absorption loss as well as the simple unit cell geometry to demonstrate large-scale (centimeter-sized) all-dielectric metamaterial perfect reflectors made from silicon cylinder resonators. These perfect reflectors, operating in the telecommunications band, were fabricated using self-assembly based nanosphere lithography. In spite of the disorder originating from the self-assembly process, the average reflectance of the metamaterial perfect reflectors is 99.7% at 1530 nm, surpassing the reflectance of metallic mirrors. Moreover, the spectral separation of the electric and magnetic resonances can be chosen to achieve the required reflection bandwidth while maintaining a high tolerance to disorder. The scalability of this design could lead to new avenues of manipulating light for low-loss and large-area photonic applications.