Multifunctional Full-Space Metahologram Employing a Monolayer Phase-Encoding Metasurface

Abstract

Full-space metasurfaces exhibit considerable capacities in the fields of electromagnetic wave-front tailoring due to their functional and spatial integration, and extensive applications in modern communication systems. However, almost all metasurfaces for wave-front tailoring are implemented by multilayer dielectric cascade structures, which not only present imperfections in the cost and manufacturing process, but are also detrimental to integration. As such, it is highly desirable to actualize a high-performance metasurface that merely relies on elaborated designs and simple manufacturing process. This study combines frequency multiplexing, spatial channel multiplexing, and polarization multiplexing to propose a full-space metahologram with four different information channels based on a thin double-face copper-cladded metasurface. Exploiting the propagation phase, linear-polarized incident waves can be independently manipulated for the reflection semispace. Integrating the Pancharatnam-Berry (PB) phase, circular-polarized incident waves are tailored for the transmission semispace. To validate the concept, a metahologram sample is fabricated and tested. The experimental results are fully consistent with theoretical calculations and numerical simulation results. The metasurface has a useful role in multifunctional metadevices, and paves the way for potential applications in the fields of antennas and communication systems.