Towards 3D-Printed Inverse-Designed Metaoptics

Abstract

Optical metasurfaces have been heralded as the platform to integrate multiple functionalities in a compact form-factor, potentially replacing bulky components. A central stepping stone towards realizing this promise is the demonstration of multifunctionality under several constraints (e.g. at multiple incident wavelengths and/or angles) in a single device -an achievement being hampered by design limitations inherent to single-layer planar geometries. Here, we propose a general framework for the inverse design of volumetric 3D metaoptics via topology optimization, showing that even few-wavelength thick devices can achieve high-efficiency multifunctionality. We embody our framework in multiple closely-spaced patterned layers of a low-index polymer. We experimentally demonstrate our

End-to-end metasurface inverse design for single-shot multi-channel imaging

“…While there has been significant progress towards this goal [3], most metalenses suffer from fundamental space-bandwidth limits on wave focusing [11]. Although nanophotonic inverse design has introduced several innovations to metaoptics architectures [12][13][14][15][16][17], further disruptive improvements await the advent of mature three-dimensional (3D) nanofabrication [18][19][20]. In contrast, recent studies in end-to-end inverse design [7][8][9] have unveiled "computationally aware" nanostructures that bear little semblance to a lens and offer capabilities beyond optics-only or computation-only designs.…”