Search for: All records

Real-time, low-cost, and wireless mechanical vibration monitoring is necessary for industrial applications to track the operation status of equipment, environmental applications to proactively predict natural disasters, as well as day-to-day applications such as vital sign monitoring. Despite this urgent need, existing solutions, such as laser vibrometers, commercial Wi-Fi devices, and cameras, lack wide practical deployment due to their limited sensitivity and functionality. Here we proposed a fully passive, metamaterial-based vibration processing device, fabricated prototypes working at different frequencies ranging from 5 Hz to 285 Hz, and verified that the device can improve the sensitivity of wireless vibration measurement methods by more than ten times when attached to vibrating surfaces. Additionally, the device realizes an analog real-time vibration filtering/labeling effect, and the device also provides a platform for surface editing, which adds more functionalities to the current non-contact sensing systems. Finally, the working frequency of the device is widely adjustable over orders of magnitudes, broadening its applicability to different applications, such as structural health diagnosis, disaster warning, and vital signal monitoring.

Vortex beams (VBs) carrying orbital angular moment (OAM) modes have been proven to be promising resources for increasing communication capacity. Although considerable attention has been paid on metasurface-based VB generators due to the unprecedented advantages of metasurface, most applications are usually limited at a single band with a fixed OAM mode. In this work, an emerging dual-band reflection-type coding metasurface is proposed to mitigate these issues by newly engineered meta-atoms, which could achieve independent 2-bit phase modulations at two frequency bands. The proposed coding metasurface could efficiently realize and fully control dual-band VBs carrying frequency selective OAM modes under the linearly polarized incidence. As the first illustrative example, a dual-band VB generator with normal beam direction is fabricated and characterized at two widely used communication bands (Ku and Ka bands). Moreover, by encoding proper coding sequences, versatile beams carrying frequency selective OAM modes can be achieved. Therefore, by adding a gradient phase sequence to the first VB generator, the second one is designed to steer the generated beams to a preset direction, which could enable diverse scenarios. The measurement results of both VB generators agree very well with the numerical ones, validating the full control capability of the proposed approach.

Multichannel devices, which can manipulate multiple distinguished wavefronts like a kaleidoscope, are preferably desired for compact systems with higher integration and smaller footprint. Particularly, multiband metasurfaces are one of the intuitive and effective approaches to expand the number of the operation channels in meta‐devices. In this work, a strategy to design four‐channel metasurface based on a novel single‐cell quad‐band meta‐atom is proposed for the kaleidoscopic wavefront manipulations. While illuminating a circularly polarized wave, the independent 2π phase shifts at four distinct frequencies can be obtained by the single‐layered substrate meta‐atom with almost theoretically maximal transmission amplitudes. As a proof‐of‐concept demonstration, a four‐channel metasurface is designed to realize a single‐vortex beam generator, a dual‐vortex beam generator, a meta‐hologram, and a focusing metalens in channels 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively. The experiment and full‐wave simulation results agree very well with each other, validating the design concept. The proposed strategy has increased the number of operation frequencies for a single‐cell meta‐atom while guaranteeing the electromagnetic performance, and may lead to advances in a variety of multifunctional devices with a compact structure such as ultra‐thin metalenses, beam generators, and holographic displays.

Metasurface has drawn much attention due to its unprecedented wave‐front manipulation abilities with an ultrathin flat profile. However, the metasurface as a diffractive device usually suffers from chromatic aberrations, which greatly hinders the design freedom at different wavelengths. In this work, it is demonstrated that this limitation can be overcome by a multifunctional metasurface with completely independent phase modulations at three arbitrarily wavelengths. Specifically, a novel single‐layer tri‐spectral meta‐atom composed of three alternatively arranged slot and metallic resonators is proposed to operate at three distinct wavelengths, where 2π geometric phase modulations under the circularly polarized incidence can be achieved independently by rotating the corresponding resonators. As proof of concept demonstrations, a tri‐wavelength vortex beam generator and a meta‐hologram are designed to verify the proposed method. First, a vortex beam generator with arbitrary topological charge numbers at three wavelengths is designed and verified through theoretical calculation and full‐wave simulation. Moreover, a meta‐hologram generated by the computer‐generated holography is designed to display three frequency selective holographic images on the same image plane. The tri‐wavelength meta‐hologram is validated through theoretical calculation, full‐wave simulation, and experiment. The experimental results agree very well with the numerical ones, demonstrating the attractive capabilities of multifunctionalities at three wavelengths.

Metasurfaces are planar structures that can offer unprecedented freedoms to manipulate electromagnetic wavefronts at deep‐subwavelength scale. The wavelength‐dependent behavior of the metasurface could severely reduce the design freedom. Besides, realizing high‐efficiency metasurfaces with a simple design procedure and easy fabrication is of great interest. Here, a novel approach to design highly efficient meta‐atoms that can achieve full 2π phase coverage at two wavelengths independently in the transmission mode is proposed. More specifically, a bilayer meta‐atom is designed to operate at two wavelengths, the cross‐polarized transmission efficiencies of which reach more than 70% at both wavelengths. The 2π phase modulations at two wavelengths under the circularly polarized incidence can be achieved independently by varying the orientations of the two resonators constructing the meta‐atom based on Pancharatnam–Berry phase principle. As proof‐of‐concept demonstrations, three dual‐wavelength meta‐devices employing the proposed meta‐atom are numerically investigated and experimentally verified, including two metalenses (1D and 2D) with the same focusing length and a vortex beam generator carrying different orbital angular momentum modes at two operation wavelengths. Both the simulation and experimental results satisfy the design goals, which validate the proposed approach.

Meta‐devices have attracted great interest due to the unprecedented capabilities of manipulating wavefronts. Complex‐amplitude hologram can provide high‐quality images that can be free of ghost images and undesired diffraction orders. However, conventional meta‐holograms usually operate at a single band with phase‐only modulation. Here, a reflective 2‐bit meta‐hologram is proposed to operate with independent complex‐amplitude modulations at two frequency bands. The high‐efficiency meta‐atom is composed of a top perforated metallic layer, on which two C‐shape split ring resonators (CSRRs) are located in the centers of a circular hole and an annular slot. By tuning the sizes of the two CSRRs, dual‐band 2‐bit phase modulations can be individually achieved, while the amplitude profile can be continuously tailored at each band by rotating the corresponding CSRR without affecting the phase responses. Based on this emerging meta‐atom, a dual‐band bifocal metalens is demonstrated numerically and a bispectral meta‐hologram is validated both numerically and experimentally at two widely used communication bands. The proposed method features all desirable advantages of the coding metasurfaces with extra degrees of freedom by providing independent frequency control and amplitude modulation, which can provide great opportunities in multifunctional applications with enhanced performance and boosted information capacity.