A Reconfigurable Active Huygens' Metalens

Abstract

Metasurfaces enable a new paradigm to control electromagnetic waves by manipulating subwavelength artificial structures within just a fraction of wavelength. Despite the rapid growth, simultaneously achieving low‐dimensionality, high transmission efficiency, real‐time continuous reconfigurability, and a wide variety of reprogrammable functions is still very challenging, forcing researchers to realize just one or few of the aforementioned features in one design. This study reports a subwavelength reconfigurable Huygens' metasurface realized by loading it with controllable active elements. The proposed design provides a unified solution to the aforementioned challenges of real‐time local reconfigurability of efficient Huygens' metasurfaces. As one exemplary demonstration, a reconfigurable metalens at the microwave frequencies is experimentally realized, which, to the best of the knowledge, demonstrates for the first time that multiple and complex focal spots can be controlled simultaneously at distinct spatial positions and reprogrammable in any desired fashion, with fast response time and high efficiency. The presented active Huygens' metalens may offer unprecedented potentials for real‐time, fast, and sophisticated electromagnetic wave manipulation such as dynamic holography, focusing, beam shaping/steering, imaging, and active emission control.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Feb 24, 2017
Source ID
10.1002/adma.201606422

Entities

People

  • Andrea Alù
  • Bo Zhu
  • Cheng‐wei Qiu
  • Francesco Monticone
  • Junming Zhao
  • Ke Chen
  • Lei Zhang
  • Shuang Zhang
  • Tian Jiang
  • Xumin Ding
  • Yijun Feng
  • Yongjune Kim

Organizations

  • Air Force Office of Scientific Research
  • European Research Council
  • Harbin Institute of Technology
  • Leverhulme Trust
  • Nanjing University
  • Robert A. Welch Foundation
  • University of Birmingham
  • University of Texas at Austin

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Integrated Circuit Design and Technology.
  • Optical Physics and Photonics.
  • Quantum Dot Semiconductor Device Photonics and Graphene Optoelectronic Materials and THz Physics.