Spatial wavefront shaping with a multipolar-resonant metasurface for structured illumination microscopy

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel metasurface-based approach for structured illumination microscopy that simplifies the optical setup by generating versatile wavefronts with a single, ultrathin surface, achieving superresolution comparable to traditional methods.

Contribution

It demonstrates the design and computational validation of a multipolar-resonant metasurface capable of producing multiple illumination patterns for SIM, reducing system complexity.

Findings

Metasurface can generate multiple illumination patterns via polarization or angle variation.

Achieves resolution comparable to conventional SIM methods.

Potential for simplified, ultrathin SIM optical systems.

Abstract

Structured illumination microscopy (SIM) achieves superresolution in fluorescence imaging through patterned illumination and computational image reconstruction, yet current methods require bulky, costly modulation optics and high-precision optical alignment. This work demonstrates how nano-optical metasurfaces, rationally designed to tailor the optical wavefront at sub-wavelength dimensions, hold great potential as ultrathin, single-surface, all-optical wavefront modulators for SIM. We computationally demonstrate this principle with a multipolar-resonant metasurface composed of silicon nanostructures which generate versatile optical wavefronts in the far field upon variation of the polarization or angle of incident light. Algorithmic optimization is performed to identify the seven most suitable illumination patterns for SIM generated by the metasurface based on three key criteria. We find that multipolar-resonant metasurface SIM (mrm-SIM) achieves resolution comparable to conventional methods by applying the seven optimal metasurface-generated wavefronts to simulated fluorescent objects and reconstructing the objects using proximal gradient descent. The work presented here paves the way for a metasurface-enabled experimental simplification of structured illumination microscopy.