Shang Sun

All-Dielectric Full-Color Printing with TiO2 Metasurfaces

Recently, color generation in resonant nanostructures have been intensively studied. Despite of their exciting progresses, the structural colors are usually generated by the plasmonic resonances of metallic nanoparticles. Due to the inherent plasmon damping, such plasmonic nanostructures are usually hard to create very distinct color impressions. Here we utilize the concept of metasurfaces to produce all-dielectric, low-loss, and high-resolution structural colors. We have fabricated TiO2 metasurfaces with electron-beam lithography and a very simple lift-off process. The optical characterizations showed that the TiO2 metasurfaces with different unit sizes could generate high reflection peaks at designed wavelengths. The maximal reflectance was as high as 64% with full width at half-maximum (fwhm) around 30 nm. Consequently, distinct colors have been observed in bright field and the generated colors covered the entire visible spectral range. The detailed numerical analysis shows that the distinct colors were generated by the electric resonance and magnetic resonances in TiO2 metasurfaces. Based on the unique properties of magnetic resonances, distinct colors have been observed in bright field when the metasurfaces were reduced to a 4 × 4 array, giving a spatial resolution around 16000 dpi. Considering the cost, stability, and CMOS-compatibility, this research will be important for the structural colors to reach real-world industrial applications.

Photon hopping and nanowire based hybrid plasmonic waveguide and ring-resonator

Nanowire based hybrid plasmonic structure plays an important role in achieving nanodevices, especially for the wide band-gap materials. However, the conventional schemes of nanowire based devices such as nano-resonators are usually isolated from the integrated nano-network and have extremely low quality (Q) factors. Here we demonstrate the transmission of waves across a gap in hybrid plasmonic waveguide, which is termed as “photon hopping”. Based on the photon hopping, we show that the emissions from nanodevices can be efficiently collected and conducted by additional nanowires. The collection ratio can be higher than 50% for a wide range of separation distance, transverse shift, and tilt. Moreover, we have also explored the possibility of improving performances of individual devices by nano-manipulating the nanowire to a pseudo-ring. Our calculations show that both Q factor and Purcell factor have been increased by more than an order of magnitude. We believe that our researches will be essential to forming nanolasers and the following nano-networks.

Enhanced second-harmonic generation from nonlinear optical metamagnetics

We present a numerical simulation of second-harmonic generation (SHG) from a nonlinear magnetic metamaterial. By inserting a second-order nonlinear material in the high local field area of magnetic metamaterial, which consists of periodic arrays of paired thin silver strips, the convertion efficiency of SHG has been significantly enhanced by almost four orders of magnitude. The corresponding field patterns and further studies on dependance between SHG and symmetry of nonlinear crystal show that the increase of the conversion efficiency is attributed to the local field enhancement caused by the magnetic resonnance of the structure. Our researches provide an additional way to further improve the optical nonlinearity in nanostructures.

Integrated photonic power divider with arbitrary power ratios.

Integrated optical power splitters are one of the fundamental building blocks in photonic integrated circuits. Conventional multimode interferometer-based power splitters are widely used as they have reasonable footprints and are easy to fabricate. However, it is challenging to realize arbitrary split ratios, especially for multi-outputs. In this Letter, an ultra-compact power splitter with a QR code-like nanostructure is designed by a nonlinear fast search method. The highly functional structure is composed of a number of freely designed square pixels with the size of 120×120  nm which could be either dielectric or air. The light waves are scattered by a number of etched squares with optimized locations, and the scattered waves superimpose at the outputs with the desired power ratio. We demonstrate 1×2 splitters with 1:1, 1:2, and 1:3 split ratios, and a 1×3 splitter with the ratio of 1:2:1. The footprint for all the devices is only 3.6×3.6  μm. Well-controlled split ratios are measured for all the cases. The measured transmission efficiencies of all the splitters are close to 80% over 30 nm wavelength range.

The combination of high Q factor and chirality in twin cavities and microcavity chain.

Chirality in microcavities has recently shown its bright future in optical sensing and microsized coherent light sources. The key parameters for such applications are the high quality (Q) factor and large chirality. However, the previous reported chiral resonances are either low Q modes or require very special cavity designs. Here we demonstrate a novel, robust, and general mechanism to obtain the chirality in circular cavity. By placing a circular cavity and a spiral cavity in proximity, we show that ultra-high Q factor, large chirality, and unidirectional output can be obtained simultaneously. The highest Q factors of the non-orthogonal mode pairs are almost the same as the ones in circular cavity. And the co-propagating directions of the non-orthogonal mode pairs can be reversed by tuning the mode coupling. This new mechanism for the combination of high Q factor and large chirality is found to be very robust to cavity size, refractive index, and the shape deformation, showing very nice fabrication tolerance. And it can be further extended to microcavity chain and microcavity plane. We believe that our research will shed light on the practical applications of chirality and microcavities.

Large-Scale and Defect-Free Silicon Metamaterials with Magnetic Response

All-dielectric metamaterials offer a potential low-loss alternative to plasmonic metamaterials at optical frequencies. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a silicon based large-scale magnetic metamaterial, which is fabricated with standard photolithography and conventional reactive ion etching process. The periodically arrayed silicon sub-wavelength structures possess electric and magnetic responses with low loss in mid-infrared wavelength range. We investigate the electric and magnetic resonances dependencies on the structural parameters and demonstrate the possibility of obtaining strong dielectric-based magnetic resonance through a broad band range. The optical responses are quite uniform over a large area about 2 × 2 cm2. The scalability of this design and compatibility fabrication method with highly developed semiconductor devices process could lead to new avenues of manipulating light for low-loss, large-area and real integrated photonic applications.

Polarization-independent metamaterial with broad ultrahigh refractive index in terahertz region

In this article, we report a broadband, isotropic three-dimensional metamaterial design with extremely high refractive index in the terahertz region. Two peaks of refractive index, 67.9 at 2.14 THz and 66.9 at 2.16 THz, are observed under TE and TM mode polarizations, respectively. The high refractive index metamaterial maintains low loss with figure of merit as high as 15 under both polarizations. Moreover, the refractive index does not decrease sharply at higher frequencies, and shows a very broadband behavior with a full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of 2 THz.

Absorption enhancement in thin-film organic solar cells through electric and magnetic resonances in optical metamaterial

Light absorption plays a key role in photovoltaic devices, especially in thin-film organic solar cells. Here we study the enhancement of optical absorption in a thin organic layer by embedding it into magnetic metamaterials. In a periodic metal-polymeric-metal sandwiched structure, the absorption of transverse magnetic polarized light has been significantly enhanced. The maximum enhancement is around 7 times, which is attributed to the strong local field enhancement in the organic thin film. Importantly, due to the coexistence of large electric resonance and magnetic resonance in magnetic metamaterials, the enhancement of light absorption has been obtained in a broadband from 350 nm to 750 nm, which is almost twice of that of the conventional plasmonic device and covers the strongest part of the solar spectrum. Moreover, such absorption enhancement is also valid for a wide range of incident angles. We believe that our finding can lead to a variety of important applications in solar cell technology.

Real-Time Tunable Colors from Microfluidic Reconfigurable All-Dielectric Metasurfaces

Structural colors arising from all-dielectric nanostructures are very promising for high-resolution color nanoprinting and high-density optical storage. However, once the all-dielectric nanostructures are fabricated, their optical performances are usually static or change slowly, significantly limiting the practical applications in advanced displays. Herein, we experimentally demonstrate the real-time tunable colors with microfluidic reconfigurable all-dielectric metasurfaces. The metasurface is composed of an array of TiO2 nanoblocks, which are embedded in a polymeric microfluidic channel. By injecting solutions with a different refractive index into the channel, the narrow band reflection peak and the corresponding distinct colors of a TiO2 metasurface can be precisely controlled. The transition time is as small as 16 ms, which is orders of magnitude faster than the current techniques. By varying the lattice size of TiO2 metasurfaces, the real-time tunable colors are able to span the entire visible spectrum. Meanwhile, the injection and ejection of solvent have also shown the capability of the erasion and the restoration of information encoded in TiO2 metasurfaces. The combination of all-dielectric nanostructures with microfluidic channels shall boost their applications in functional color display, banknote security, anticounterfeiting, and point-of-care devices.

The impact of emission mechanisms on the long-lived states around avoided resonance crossings in chaotic microcavity.

Here we demonstrate the impacts of emission mechanisms on the light confinements in open systems. Taking the oval-shaped cavities as examples, we show that the enhancements in quality (Q) factors are usually associated with the universal emissions. When the coupled resonances have similar far field patterns, the Q factor of the long-lived resonance has the possibility to be enhanced by the coherent destruction at the decay channels. Otherwise, the Q factors of long-lived resonances are usually reduced around the level crossings.