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Abstract Metasurface has emerged as a powerful platform for controlling light at subwavelength thickness, enabling new functionalities for imaging, polarization manipulation, and angular momentum conversion within a flat surface. An integrated asymmetric metasurface simultaneously achieving broadband, low loss forward power transmission, and significant back reflection suppression in multi‐mode waveguides is explored. The tapering along the direction of light propagation leads to low loss and space‐efficient mode conversion. Enhanced by a double‐flipped structure, a thin (2.5 µm) metasurface can simultaneously achieve high conversion efficiency (>80%), and back‐reflection efficiency of 90% over a 200 nm wavelength range. Such single‐side reflectors can be one of the enabling components for gain‐integrated adaptive optics on a chip.
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Steering with light: indexable photomotility in liquid crystalline polymers
Harnessing light to achieve manipulation and motility in meso and mm-scale systems offers the ability to remotely trigger actuation without requiring on-board power. Central to achieving macroscopic photomotility is the generation of asymmetric interaction between the light-responsive actuator and a substrate. Here, we demonstrate a facile route for achieving indexable, stepped translation of structures fabricated from azobenzene-functionalize liquid crystalline polymers (ALCP). The symmetry breaking in the dynamics of coiling (during irradiation) and uncoiling (when the light is turned off) as a function of the director orientation in splayed ALCP strips leads to asymmetric reaction forces in the interaction with a surface. The broken symmetry leads to directional translation of the center of mass in discrete steps for each on/off cycle of irradiation. Creating composite structures offers a route for hard-coding the trajectories of motility across a range of trajectories that are either rectilinear or curvilinear. Expanding this approach can offer a framework for achieving steerable light-powered microrobots that can translate on arbitrary surface topographies.
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- PAR ID:
- 10066021
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- RSC Advances
- Volume:
- 7
- Issue:
- 83
- ISSN:
- 2046-2069
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 52510 to 52516
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1039/C7RA10619J
