Metalens With Artificial Focus Pattern

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel metalens design that shapes light into customizable focus patterns like lines and rings, expanding the potential of metasurfaces beyond traditional point focusing for advanced optical applications.

Contribution

It proposes a new mechanism for creating artificial focus patterns with metalenses, demonstrated through various shaped focus designs fabricated via CMOS-compatible processes.

Findings

Successfully engineered line and ring-shaped focus patterns.

Demonstrated fabrication of 'U' and 'M' shaped focus metalenses.

Potential applications in beam engineering and nano lithography.

Abstract

Metalens as one of the most popular applications of emmerging optical metasurfaces has raised widspread interest recently. With nano structures fully controlling phase, polarization and transmission, metalens has achieved comparable performance of commercial objective lenses. While recent studies seeking for the accomplishment of traditional focusing behaviors through metalens are successful, inthis work, we have discovered that instead of focusing light to a point, metasurface further enables shaping the focus into a flexibly designed pattern, with more promises and potentials. New mechanism and generalizations of conventional point-focused metalens guiding principles have been proposed with metalens concentrating light to artificial focus pattern. As proving examples, we have demonstrated the engineering of metalens with artificial focus pattern by creating line and ring-shaped focus as 'drawing tools'. The metalens with 'U' and 'M' shaped focus are characterized for the proof of concepts. These metalens are fabricated through a single layer of silicon-based material through CMOS compatible nano fabrication process. The mechanism to generate artificial focus pattern can be applied to a plethora of future on-chip optical devices with applications ranging from beam engineering to next generation nano lithography.