Directional light emitters and image sensors based on plasmonic metasurfaces
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Abstract
Advances in optical device fabrication techniques and continued research have enabled many exciting new scientific possibilities in the manipulation of light radiation. With the great strides made in nanofabrication technologies and the huge body of work done on nano-related research, we now have a better understanding of light-matter interactions at the nanoscale and have the ability to make structures functioning at this scale with unprecedented design flexibility. This has led to an explosion of knowledge in nanooptics and opened great possibilities in light manipulation. In this work we explore the use of nanophotonic structures for the directional control of light emission and photodetection. Typical optoelectoronic devices such as LEDs and light detectors are intrinsically isotropic, and directionality is usually enforced by external optical elements like lenses, pinholes and reflectors. Similarly, standard off-the-shelf light sensors are typically non-directional with a Lambertian angular response profile. Here, we investigate the unique properties of plasmonic metasurfaces that can be harnessed to enforce directionality at the device level, without the need for bulky and often complex external light control techniques, greatly favoring miniaturization which often allows for faster, more efficient, and cheaper devices. Optimized designs are presented with proof-of-concept simulation results and experimental testing. With these designs, we also explore an exciting new application in imaging, the development of a lens-less ultra-thin flat camera based on the compound-eye vision modality, where each individual imaging unit is a single directional detector.
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International