Full-space metasurface holograms in the visible range

Conventional metasurface holography is usually implemented in either transmission space or reflection space. Herein, we show a dielectric metasurface that can simultaneously project two independent holographic images in the transmission and reflection spaces, respectively, merely with a single-layer design approach. Specifically, two types of dielectric nanobricks in a nanostructured metasurface are employed to act as half-wave plates for geometric phase modulation. One type of nanobrick is designed to reflect most of incident circularly-polarized light into reflection space, enabled with magnetic resonance, while another type of nanobrick transmits it into transmission space, without resonance involved. By controlling the orientation angles and randomly interleaving the two types of nanobricks to form a metasurface, a full-space metasurface hologram can be established. We experimentally demonstrate this trans-reflective meta-holography by encoding the geometric phase information of two independent images into a single metasurface, and all observed holographic images agree well with our predictions. Our research expands the field-of-view of metasurface holography from half- to full-space, which can find its markets in optical sensing, image displays, optical storages and many other potential applications. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement

Automated summary

A dielectric metasurface is demonstrated to project two independent holographic images in transmission and reflection spaces simultaneously, expanding the field-of-view of metasurface holography. The metasurface uses two types of dielectric nanobricks for geometric phase modulation, enabling full-space meta-holography with a single-layer design approach, showing potential in optical sensing, image displays, and optical storages.