An official website of the United States government
Designing functional materials requires a deep search through multidimensional spaces for system parameters that yield desirable material properties. For cases where conventional parameter sweeps or trial-and-error sampling are impractical, inverse methods that frame design as a constrained optimization problem present an attractive alternative. However, even efficient algorithms require time- and resource-intensive characterization of material properties many times during optimization, imposing a design bottleneck. Approaches that incorporate machine learning can help address this limitation and accelerate the discovery of materials with targeted properties. In this article, we review how to leverage machine learning to reduce dimensionality in order to effectively explore design space, accelerate property evaluation, and generate unconventional material structures with optimal properties. We also discuss promising future directions, including integration of machine learning into multiple stages of a design algorithm and interpretation of machine learning models to understand how design parameters relate to material properties.
more »
« less
Data-driven design of thin-film optical systems using deep active learning
A deep learning aided optimization algorithm for the design of flat thin-film multilayer optical systems is developed. The authors introduce a deep generative neural network, based on a variational autoencoder, to perform the optimization of photonic devices. This algorithm allows one to find a near-optimal solution to the inverse design problem of creating an anti-reflective grating, a fundamental problem in material science. As a proof of concept, the authors demonstrate the method’s capabilities for designing an anti-reflective flat thin-film stack consisting of multiple material types. We designed and constructed a dielectric stack on silicon that exhibits an average reflection of 1.52 %, which is lower than other recently published experiments in the engineering and physics literature. In addition to its superior performance, the computational cost of our algorithm based on the deep generative model is much lower than traditional nonlinear optimization algorithms. These results demonstrate that advanced concepts in deep learning can drive the capabilities of inverse design algorithms for photonics. In addition, the authors develop an accurate regression model using deep active learning to predict the total reflectivity for a given optical system. The surrogate model of the governing partial differential equations can then be broadly used in the design of optical systems and to rapidly evaluate their behavior.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2111283
- PAR ID:
- 10531275
- Publisher / Repository:
- Optical Society of America
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Optics Express
- Volume:
- 30
- Issue:
- 13
- ISSN:
- 1094-4087; OPEXFF
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: Article No. 22901
- Size(s):
- Article No. 22901
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Optical metasurfaces consist of densely arranged unit cells that manipulate light through various light confinement and scattering processes. Due to its unique advantages, such as high performance, small form factor and easy integration with semiconductor devices, metasurfaces have been gathering increasing attention in fields such as displays, imaging, sensing and optical computation. Despite advances in fabrication and characterization, a viable design prediction for suitable optical response remains challenging for complex optical metamaterial systems. The computation cost required to obtain the optimal design exponentially grows as the design complexity increases. Furthermore, the design prediction is challenging since the inverse problem is often ill-posed. In recent years, deep learning (DL) methods have shown great promise in the area of inverse design. Inspired by this and the capability of DL to produce fast inference, we introduce a physics-informed DL framework to expedite the computation for the inverse design of metasurfaces. Addition of the physics-based constraints improve generalizability of the DL model while reducing data burden. Our approach introduces a tandem DL architecture with physics-based learning to alleviate the nonuniqueness issue by selecting designs that are scientifically consistent, with low error in design prediction and accurate reconstruction of optical responses. To prove the concept, we focus on the inverse design of a representative plasmonic device that consists of metal gratings deposited on a dielectric film on top of a metal substrate. The optical response of the device is determined by the geometrical dimensions as well as the material properties. The training and testing data are obtained through Rigorous Coupled-Wave Analysis (RCWA), while the physics-based constraint is derived from solving the electromagnetic (EM) wave equations for a simplified homogenized model. We consider the prediction of design for the optical response of a single wavelength incident or a spectrum of wavelength in the visible light range. Our model converges with an accuracy up to 97% for inverse design prediction with the optical response for the visible light spectrum as input. The model is also able to predict design with accuracy up to 96% and optical response reconstruction accuracy of 99% for optical response of a single wavelength of light as input.more » « less
-
Abstract The research of metamaterials has achieved enormous success in the manipulation of light in a prescribed manner using delicately designed subwavelength structures, so‐called meta‐atoms. Even though modern numerical methods allow for the accurate calculation of the optical response of complex structures, the inverse design of metamaterials, which aims to retrieve the optimal structure according to given requirements, is still a challenging task owing to the nonintuitive and nonunique relationship between physical structures and optical responses. To better unveil this implicit relationship and thus facilitate metamaterial designs, it is proposed to represent metamaterials and model the inverse design problem in a probabilistically generative manner, enabling to elegantly investigate the complex structure–performance relationship in an interpretable way, and solve the one‐to‐many mapping issue that is intractable in a deterministic model. Moreover, to alleviate the burden of numerical calculations when collecting data, a semisupervised learning strategy is developed that allows the model to utilize unlabeled data in addition to labeled data in an end‐to‐end training. On a data‐driven basis, the proposed deep generative model can serve as a comprehensive and efficient tool that accelerates the design, characterization, and even new discovery in the research domain of metamaterials, and photonics in general.more » « less
-
Metamaterials with functional responses can exhibit varying properties under different conditions (e.g., wave‐based responses or deformation‐induced property variation). This work addresses rapid inverse design of such metamaterials to meet target qualitative functional behaviors, a challenge due to its intractability and nonunique solutions. Unlike data‐intensive and noninterpretable deep‐learning‐based methods, this work proposes the random‐forest‐based interpretable generative inverse design (RIGID), a single‐shot inverse design method for fast generation of metamaterials with on‐demand functional behaviors. RIGID leverages the interpretability of a random forest‐based “design → response” forward model, eliminating the need for a more complex “response → design” inverse model. Based on the likelihood of target satisfaction derived from the trained random forest, one can sample a desired number of design solutions using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. RIGID is validated on acoustic and optical metamaterial design problems, each with fewer than 250 training samples. Compared to the genetic algorithm‐based design generation approach, RIGID generates satisfactory solutions that cover a broader range of the design space, allowing for better consideration of additional figures of merit beyond target satisfaction. This work offers a new perspective on solving on‐demand inverse design problems, showcasing the potential for incorporating interpretable machine learning into generative design under small data constraints.more » « less
-
An efficient photovoltaic power converter is a critical element in laser power beaming systems for maximizing the end-to-end power transfer efficiency while minimizing beam reflections from the receiver for safety considerations. We designed a multilayer absorber that can efficiently trap monochromatic light from broad incident angles. The proposed design is built on the concept of a one-way coherent absorber with inverse-designed aperiodic multilayer front- and back-reflectors that enable maximal optical absorption in a thin-film photovoltaic material for broad angles. We argue that the broad bandwidth is achieved through an optimization search process that automatically engineers the modal content of the cavity to create multiple overlapping resonant modes at the desired angle or frequency range. A realistic design is provided based on GaAs thin films with inverse-designed multilayer binary AlAs/AlGaAs mirrors. The proposed device can pave the way for efficient optical power beaming systems.more » « less
