Chiral metasurface device in near-infrared region designed by rectangular arrays

Abstract

Polarization is one of the fundamental properties of light and has an important application value, involving multiple fields, such as imaging, display, quantum computing, and biosensing. The artificial metasurface can achieve comprehensive control of electromagnetic waves, such as amplitudes, phases, and polarization states. Compared to traditional optical devices, the metasurfaces have advantages, such as small size and diverse functions, meeting the needs of modern optical systems for ultra-lightweight, ultra-compact, and multifunctional optical components. Chiral media are widely presented in various macroscopic and microscopic systems in nature. Circular dichroism (CD) is commonly used to describe the difference in absorption rates of left-handed circularly polarized light and right-handed circularly polarized light in chiral media. However, the optical response of chiral media in nature is usually weak and mainly located in the ultraviolet band, which limits their detection sensitivity and practical application range. In this work, we proposed a chiral metasurface model with four rectangular holes with proper rotation. By rotating the rectangular or elliptical holes at a certain angle, the symmetry of the structure is disrupted, making it chiral. The proposed metasurface devices were fabricated, and the optical measurements were performed, which were in good agreement with the designs. The normalized CD values are around 0.01 at the near-infrared region. This work provides a complete procedure of the metasurface device and initials chiral-tunable flat meta-devices. It also has broad application prospects in fields, such as polarization imaging, life sciences, and drug chiral detection.