Design and Photonic Integration of Metasurface Lenses
Open Access
- Author:
- Chen, Xi
- Graduate Program:
- Electrical Engineering
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- April 23, 2021
- Committee Members:
- Zhiwen Liu, Major Field Member
Shengxi Huang, Major Field Member
Sri-Rajasekhar Kothapalli, Outside Unit & Field Member
Xingjie Ni, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Kultegin Aydin, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- Metasurfaces
Metalens
Waveguide
Integrated Metasurfaces
Silicon Nitride Integrated metasurfaces - Abstract:
- Metasurfaces are artificially engineered surfaces with subwavelength scales, and a well-arranged array consists of nano-antennas, which are beyond conventional materials. The word “metamaterial” first appeared in 2000 and has been widely accepted in the photonics area around the 2010s. A metamaterial is an artificial material that has a property that does not exist in nature. In the optics area, metamaterials are designed to achieve amplitude, phase, polarization states, orbital momentum, absorption, the emissivity of light modulation, etc. Furthermore, optical metamaterials are composed of artificially designed periodic subwavelength units. These subwavelength units can couple with incident electromagnetic waves and give out unique properties such as negative refractive index, which cannot be found on earth. The increasing interest in metamaterials and developing nano-fabrication technology, driving many researchers to focus on a single layer or multilayer of planar metamaterials in the optical regime. Depend on the unique spatial variant optical response from the metasurfaces, massive metalenses have been developed, including the plasmonic and all-dielectric metalens, reflective and transmissive metalens, polarization depends, or independent metalens. However, those metalenses still need to be fully developed to improve their performance. In this dissertation, I will study the design principle of metalens and improve the efficiency of polarization-independent metalens. In addition, I will explore the guided wave-driven metasurfaces integrated with photonic integrated circuits because most of the metasurfaces are designed in free space. I will show the design and simulation result of different types of metalens and beam steering metasurface and metalens integrated with silicon and silicon nitride waveguide.