3D-Patterned Inverse-Designed Mid-Infrared Metaoptics

TL;DR

This paper presents multilayer nanopatterned metamaterials fabricated via two-photon lithography that enable advanced mid-infrared imaging by manipulating light based on spectral, polarization, and angular momentum properties, enhancing efficiency and multifunctionality.

Contribution

It introduces a novel multilayer 3D nanopatterning approach for designing optical metamaterials that achieve complex light manipulation for multispectral and polarimetric imaging.

Findings

Successfully fabricated multilayer scattering structures with submicron features.

Experimentally validated devices that sort light based on spectral and polarization properties.

Simulated structures that redirect light according to angular momentum.

Abstract

Modern imaging systems can be enhanced in efficiency, compactness, and application through introduction of multilayer nanopatterned structures for manipulation of light based on its fundamental properties. High transmission efficiency multispectral imaging is surprisingly elusive due to the commonplace use of filter arrays which discard most of the incident light. Further, most cameras do not leverage the wealth of information in polarization and spatial degrees of freedom. Optical metamaterials can respond to these electromagnetic properties but have been explored primarily in single-layer geometries, limiting their performance and multifunctional capacity. Here we use advanced two-photon lithography to realize multilayer scattering structures that achieve highly nontrivial optical transformations intended to process light just before it reaches a focal plane array. Computationally optimized multispectral and polarimetric sorting devices are fabricated with submicron feature sizes and experimentally validated in the mid-infrared. A final structure shown in simulation redirects light based on its angular momentum. These devices demonstrate that with precise 3-dimensional nanopatterning, one can directly modify the scattering properties of a sensor array to create advanced imaging systems.