Inverse designed WS<sub>2</sub> planar chiral metasurface with geometric phase

Abstract

Increasing attention is being paid to chiral metasurfaces due to their ability to selectively manipulate right-hand circularly polarized light or left-hand circularly polarized light. The thin nature of metasurfaces, however, poses a challenge in creating a device with effective phase modulation. Plasmonic chiral metasurfaces have attempted to address this issue by increasing light-matter interaction, but they suffer from metallic loss. Dielectric metasurfaces made from high-index materials enable phase modulation while being thin. Very few materials, however, have high refractive index and low loss at visible wavelengths. Recently, some 2D materials have been shown to exhibit high refractive index and low loss in the visible wavelengths, positioning them as promising platforms for meta-optics. This study introduces and details a planar chiral metasurface with a geometric phase composed of WS2 meta-units. By employing adjoint optimization techniques, we achieved broadband circular dichroism ( > 0.5 in the wavelength range of 653-796 nm) and a high extinction ratio (19.6 dB at lambda = 675 nm).