Optical tweezers employing forces produced by light underpin important manipulation tools employed in numerous areas of applied and biological physics. Conventional optical tweezers are widely based on refractive optics, and they require excessive auxiliary optical elements to reshape both amplitude and phase, as well as wavevector and angular momentum of light, and thus impose limitations on the overall cost and integration of optical systems. Metamaterials can provide both electric and optically induced magnetic responses in subwavelength optical structures, and they are highly beneficial to achieve unprecedented control of light required for many applications and can open new opportunities for optical manipulation. Here, we review the recent advances in the field of optical manipulation employing the physics and concepts of metamaterials and demonstrate that metamaterial structures could not only help to advance classical operations such as trapping, transporting, and sorting of particles, but they can uncover exotic optical forces such as pulling and lateral forces. In addition, apart from optical manipulation of particles (that can also be called “meta-tweezers”), metamaterials can be powered dynamically by light to realize ingenious “meta-robots.” This review culminates with an outlook discussing future novel opportunities in this recently emerged field ranging from enhanced particle manipulation to meta-robot actuation.
The power of controlling objects with mind has captivated a popular fascination to human beings. One possible path is to employ brain signal collecting technologies together with emerging programmable metasurfaces (PM), whose functions or operating modes can be switched or customized via on-site programming or pre-defined software. Nevertheless, most of existing PMs are wire-connected to users, manually-controlled and not real-time. Here, we propose the concept of remotely mind-controlled metasurface (RMCM) via brainwaves. Rather than DC voltage from power supply or AC voltages from signal generators, the metasurface is controlled by brainwaves collected in real time and transmitted wirelessly from the user. As an example, we demonstrated a RMCM whose scattering pattern can be altered dynamically according to the user’s brain waves via Bluetooth. The attention intensity information is extracted as the control signal and a mapping between attention intensity and scattering pattern of the metasurface is established. With such a framework, we experimentally demonstrated and verified a prototype of such metasurface system which can be remotely controlled by the user to modify its scattering pattern. This work paves a new way to intelligent metasurfaces and may find applications in health monitoring, 5G/6G communications, smart sensors, etc.
Metasurface operating in the transmission scheme has shown a promising scenario for flat optics applications. Nevertheless, the inherently low working efficiency of transmissive plasmonic metasurfaces at optical frequencies severely hinders them from future technology development. This work reports on a hybrid plasmonic meta‐atom (HPMA) with a simple fabrication and cost‐effective single‐lithographic process featuring a toroidal‐assisted generalized Huygens’ source with a state‐of‐the‐art circular polarization conversion efficiency beyond 50%. The HPMA representsa new upper limit for transmission efficiency in the near‐infrared. The high transmission is realized via balanced multipoles of different orders including toroidal dipole that satisfies the generalized Kerker condition. The introduction of toroidal dipole provides an additional degree of freedom to tailor the wave interference and radiation symmetry rather than the use of a conventional electric and magnetic multipolar coupling. In addition, two high‐performance metasurfaces by combining the HPMAs with the geometric phase method are highlighted. The highly‐transmissive beam deflection metasurface and plasmonic metalens respectively yield anomalous refraction with 38.2% optical efficiency and 46.56% focusing efficiency, both experimentally showing a record transmission level. The findings may open new ways to design highly‐efficient plasmonic metasurfaces and to take one step forward to facilitate nearly optimal and practical nanophotonic devices.
The recent progress in plasmonic metasurfaces gives rise to an intense evolution of controlling light properties such as phase, amplitude, polarization, and frequency. In this work, a new paradigm is established to control the light properties centered on low‐loss toroidal multipoles with high field enhancement in contrast to most of the previous plasmonic metasurfaces that are optimized through electric and magnetic multipolar resonances. Through a proof‐of‐concept demonstration, a linear cross‐polarization conversion efficiency reaching 22.9%, remarked as the optimal value that can exist in a single‐layer plasmonic metasurface in the near‐infrared spectrum, is experimentally realized. A polarization‐insensitive toroidal response, that previously was accessible only in isotropic high‐index metasurfaces, is also observed. Furthermore, a giant anisotropic (polarization‐sensitive) generation of the second‐harmonic frequency is demonstrated with the proposed polarization‐independent toroidal metasurface that provides different levels of electric energy storage within the metasurface. These findings open a new path for keeping low‐efficiency plasmonic components on track when one engineers a metasurface based on the toroidal multipole family.
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