The Dawn of Metadevices: From Contemporary Designs to Exotic Applications

Abstract

In recent years, metamaterials and metasurfaces have prospered in many fields of “science and technology,” covering the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Metasurface devices constituting of a set arrangement of meta-atoms translate into modern-day miniaturized means to achieve planar, ultrathin, multifunctional electromagnetic (EM) systems. Metasurfaces are ideal candidates to develop next-generation, lightweight, and fabrication-friendly optical components as they impart local and space-variant phase changes on incident EM waves, providing more comprehensive control over EM wavefronts. This attribute has been instrumental in realizing a variety of special beams for high-capacity data transmission and superresolution imaging. Furthermore, from the perspective of efficiency, the below-par performance of previously explored plasmonic-based metasurfaces can be enhanced by employing all-dielectric metasurfaces. All-dielectric metasurfaces with high refractive indices have high resonance quality factors, low cost, and CMOS fabrication compatibility. 2D materials-based metasurface design has succeeded in further reducing the device footprints for better integration in optoelectronic devices. The conventional, time- and computation-intensive EM solvers have largely been assisted by artificial intelligence techniques, resulting in quicker metasurface designing. This review focuses on the state-of-the-art meta-devices employed for wavefront manipulations of optical waves. The design variants and applications of metasurfaces constitute a prolific field for future research to meet existing challenges and make the devices more suitable for real-time applications.

Highly Efficient Perfect Vortex Beams Generation Based on All-Dielectric Metasurface for Ultraviolet Light

“…The nanoscale thickness and planar footprints of metasurfaces enable their fabrication using single-step lithography technologies and allow them to take full advantage of mature semiconductor industries. So far, the research community has demonstrated numerous high-performance metasurfaces exhibiting a chain of functionalities including beam shaping [26], high-resolution imaging [27][28][29], metaabsorbers [30][31][32][33], asymmetric light transmission [34][35][36][37], hologram projection [38][39][40][41][42][43][44], and structured light generation [45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54].…”

Application of machine-learning techniques for characteristic analysis of refractory materials

“…Metasurface based designs have shown the potential for shaping the optical wavefronts by featuring only compact footprint in contrast to the bulky geometric optics [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. The designs become capable of providing the control by engineering the geometry and size of meta-atom [9][10][11].…”

Helicity multiplexed broadband meta-holography for ultraviolet regime

“…In advanced wavefront shaping, metasurfaces with extraordinary properties overcome conventional optics [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. The manipulation of fundamental properties of electromagnetic (EM) waves with carefully engineered subwavelength nanostructures has attracted much attention [8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. Owing to this, metasurfaces have been demonstrated for various applications such as chiral meta-holography [15][16][17][18][19], meta-lensing [20][21][22][23][24], novel light structuring [25][26][27][28], integrated circuits [29,30] and antennas [31,32] etc.…”