Roadmap for Optical Metasurfaces

Abstract

Metasurfaces have recently risen to prominence in optical research, providing unique functionalities that can be used for imaging, beam forming, holography, polarimetry, and many more, while keeping device dimensions small. Despite the fact that a vast range of basic metasurface designs has already been thoroughly studied in the literature, the number of metasurfacerelated papers is still growing at a rapid pace, as metasurface research is now spreading to adjacent fields, including computational imaging, augmented and virtual reality, automotive, display, biosensing, nonlinear, quantum and topological optics, optical computing, and more. At the same time, the ability of metasurfaces to perform optical functions in much more compact optical systems has triggered strong and constantly growing interest from various industries that greatly benefit from the availability of miniaturized, highly functional, and efficient optical components that can be integrated in optoelectronic systems at low cost. This creates a truly unique opportunity for the field of metasurfaces to make both a scientific and an industrial impact. The goal of this Roadmap is to mark this "golden age" of metasurface research and define future directions to encourage scientists and engineers to drive research and development in the field of metasurfaces toward both scientific excellence and broad industrial adoption.

All-dielectric metasurface for polarization-multiplexed single-pixel imaging

“…In practical manufacturing, the EBL and DUV lithography methods face with challenges of inefficiency, high cost and so on. NIL method can produce the proposed metasurfaces on a large scale and achieve high optical efficiency, thus represents a reliable solution for massive production [50][51][52]. In fact, there are other solutions that can multiplex the polarization channels.…”

“…In practical manufacturing, the electron beam lithography (EBL) and deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography methods face with challenges of inefficiency, high cost and so on. Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) method can produce the proposed metasurfaces on a large scale and achieve high optical efficiency, thus represents a reliable solution for massive production [50][51][52].…”

Synergy between AI and Optical Metasurfaces: A Critical Overview of Recent Advances

“…There are many other applications that are not even mentioned there. For a vastly more detailed recent list of challenges systematized over different fields of metasurfaces research one could consult the excellent, systematic and quite long article written as a roadmap for optical metasurfaces [392]. One must mention that even for those metasurfaces not explicitly mentioned as a part of AI-metasurface synergy it is valid that at least their design is amply supported by AI, most often through inverse procedures, without which most of them could not have been produced.…”

“…However, the writer decided against it. The reason for this decision is that, while writing this manuscript, a high-profile open-access treatise appeared online (at the very end of February 2024) in ACS Photonics, entitled "Roadmap for Optical Metasurfaces" [392] and written by 43 authors, many of whom are luminaries of the nanophotonics field generally and of metasurfaces particularly, including people who created the field itself. The publication was so fresh that at the moment of writing this text no bibliographic data were available for it on the publisher's website.…”

Iso-propagation vortices: a breakthrough in optical communication technology

“…Metasurfaces composed of sub-wavelength-sized nanoantennas can manipulate electromagnetic waves with high precision, enabling small, lightweight, and dynamically reconfigurable optical components. [12][13][14] The integration of metasurfaces and IPVs enhances the precise control of beam parameters to create highly customized, efficient beam profiles that optimize transmission over a various media, facilitating the use of more subchannels within the same receiver size, and therefore resulting in a significant increase in capacity. This synergy improves beam control, reducing the size and divergence of IPVs and enabling advanced multiplexing techniques, adaptive optics for deep space communications, high-resolution imaging, and quantum communications.…”