Scalable high-efficiency metasurface-refractive retro-reflector

Quan Yuan¹,
Qin Ge¹,
Xiujuan Zou⁶,
Yi Zhang¹,
Yuhang Yang¹,
Boyan Fu¹,
Ruoyu Lin¹,
Boping He¹,
Shuming Wang^{1, 2, 3},
Din Ping Tsai^{4, 5},
Shining Zhu^{1, 2, 3},
Zhenlin Wang^{1, 3}

1.
National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China
2.
Key Laboratory of Intelligent Optical Sensing and Manipulation, Ministry of Education, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, China
3.
Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing, 210093, China
4.
Department of Electrical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China
5.
The State Key Laboratory of Terahertz and Millimeter Waves, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China
6.
College of Electronic and Optical Engineering, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, 210023, China

Funds: This work was supported by the National Program on Key Basic Research Project of China (2022YFA1404300), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 12325411, 62288101, 11774162, and 62375232), The Open Research Fund of the State Key Laboratory of Transient Optics and Photonics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SKLST202218), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (020414380175), Natural Science Research Start Start-up Foundation of Recruiting Talents of Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications (Grant No. NY223152), The University Grants Committee/Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China [Project No. AoE/P-502/20, CRF Project: C5031-22G and C1015-21E, GRF Project: CityU15303521; CityU11305223, and Germany/Hong Kong Joint Research Scheme: GCityU101/22], and City University of Hong Kong [Project No. 9380131, 9610628, and 7005867].

摘要

Abstract: A retroreflector, an optical device that reflects light back along its incident path, plays a crucial role in optics. However, achieving high-efficiency, large-area retroreflection in planar optical systems remains a persistent challenge, constrained by the bulky nature of traditional designs like corner cube mirrors and cat’s eye retroreflectors. Here, we demonstrate a scalable metasurface-refractive retroreflector (MRR) that combines a refractive lens and meta-lens, achieving polarization-independent retroreflection with a half power field of view (FOV) of 70° and 88.5% efficiency at normal incident. The scalability of the MRR enables straightforward planar expansion into arrays, facilitating large-area effective retroreflection. Additionally, a moving object equipped with MRR is observed in a laser tracking experiment. The metasurface-refractive architecture evidently improves the functionality of the retroreflector, and paves a new path in the field of smart optical device design.

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参考文献(42)

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doi: 10.1186/s43074-025-00172-9

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Scalable high-efficiency metasurface-refractive retro-reflector

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doi: 10.1186/s43074-025-00172-9

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Scalable high-efficiency metasurface-refractive retro-reflector

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