High-Efficiency, Dual-Band Beam Splitter Based on an All-Dielectric Quasi-Continuous Metasurface

• Main Authors: Jing Li, Yonggang He, Han Ye, Tiesheng Wu, Yumin Liu, Xuyi He, Jie Cheng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-06-01
• Series: Materials
• Subjects: beam splitter; quasi-continuous metasurface; refraction; dual-band
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1944/14/12/3184

Metasurface-based beam splitters attracted huge interest for their superior properties compared with conventional ones made of bulk materials. The previously reported designs adopted discrete metasurfaces with the limitation of a discontinuous phase profile. In this paper, we propose a dual-band beam splitter, based on an anisotropic quasi-continuous metasurface, by exploring the optical responses under x-polarized (with an electric field parallel to the direction of the phase gradient) and y-polarized incidences. The adopted metasurface consists of two identical trapezoidal silicon antenna arrays with opposite spatial variations that lead to opposite phase gradients. The operational window of the proposed beam splitter falls in the infrared and visible region, respectively, for x- and y-polarized light, resulting from the different mechanisms. When x-polarized light is incident, the conversion efficiency and total transmission of the beam splitter remains higher than 90% and 0.74 within the wavelength range from 969 nm to 1054 nm, respectively. In this condition, each array can act as a beam splitter of unequal power. For y-polarized incidence, the maximum conversion efficiency and transmission reach approximately 100% and 0.85, while the values remain higher than 90% and 0.65 in the wavelength range from 687 nm to 710 nm, respectively. In this case, each array can be viewed as an effective beam deflector. We anticipate that it can play a key role in future integrated optical devices.