Large-Scale All-Dielectric Metamaterial Perfect Reflectors

TLDR

All‑dielectric metamaterials offer a low‑loss alternative to plasmonic metamaterials at optical frequencies. The study demonstrates large‑scale all‑dielectric metamaterial perfect reflectors made from silicon cylinder resonators, leveraging low absorption loss and simple unit cell geometry. The reflectors, operating in the telecommunications band, were fabricated by self‑assembly based nanosphere lithography and designed with spectrally separated electric and magnetic resonances to provide a wide reflection bandwidth and high disorder tolerance. The centimeter‑scale reflectors achieved an average reflectance of 99.7 % at 1530 nm, surpassing metallic mirrors, and their scalable design opens possibilities for low‑loss, large‑area photonic applications.

Abstract

All-dielectric metamaterials offer a potential low-loss alternative to plasmonic metamaterials at optical frequencies. Here, we take advantage of the low absorption loss as well as the simple unit cell geometry to demonstrate large-scale (centimeter-sized) all-dielectric metamaterial perfect reflectors made from silicon cylinder resonators. These perfect reflectors, operating in the telecommunications band, were fabricated using self-assembly based nanosphere lithography. In spite of the disorder originating from the self-assembly process, the average reflectance of the metamaterial perfect reflectors is 99.7% at 1530 nm, surpassing the reflectance of metallic mirrors. Moreover, the spectral separation of the electric and magnetic resonances can be chosen to achieve the required reflection bandwidth while maintaining a high tolerance to disorder. The scalability of this design could lead to new avenues of manipulating light for low-loss and large-area photonic applications.