Porous SiO$_2$ coated dielectric metasurface with consistent performance independent of environmental conditions

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to enhance dielectric metasurfaces' environmental robustness by coating them with porous SiO$_2$, maintaining their performance across different media, including biological fluids.

Contribution

The study introduces a porous SiO$_2$ coating technique that preserves metasurface efficiency regardless of surrounding environmental refractive index changes.

Findings

Metasurface performance remains stable in fluidic environments.

Porous SiO$_2$ coating protects against environmental refractive index variations.

Efficiency is maintained despite environmental changes.

Abstract

With the rapid advances of functional dielectric metasurfaces and their integration on on-chip nanophotonic devices, the necessity of metasurfaces working in different environments, especially in biological applications, arose. However, the metasurfaces' performance is tied to the unit cell's efficiency and ultimately the surrounding environment it was designed for, thus reducing its applicability if exposed to altering refractive index media. Here, we report a method to increase a metasurface's versatility by covering the high-index metasurface with a low index porous SiO$_2$ film, protecting the metasurface from environmental changes while keeping the working efficiency unchanged. We show, that a covered metasurface retains its functionality even when exposed to fluidic environments.