Development and applications of wavefront modulation technology based on new functional metasurfaces(Invited)

As a kind of smart surface, metasurfaces are usually composed of sub-wavelength nano-antenna arrays which are specially designed and processed with characteristic sizes close to or less than their working wavelengths. Metasurfaces can arbitrarily modulate the amplitude, phase and polarization of the light field. It has the advantages of ultra-thinness, ultra-small pixels, broadband, low loss, easy processing, flexible design and great functionality. This paper reviews the research progress of metasurfaces in holographic display, wavefront modulation and polarization conversion, active tunable, nonlinear wavefront modulation, and looks forward to the future development trend of metasurfaces. As an ultra-thin and miniaturized wavefront modulation device, metasurfaces have great information capacity and are more suitable for the future development of highly integrated micro optoelectronic systems. Metasurfaces provide potential feasibility and new perspectives for a plethora of applications such as holographic display, beam shaping, vortex beam generation, data storage, encryption and anti-counterfeiting, metalens and dispersion control, color printing, asymmetric transmission, nonlinear optics, the spin-Hall effect of light, optical communication, integrated optoelectronics. They are expected to replace the traditional optoelectronic devices and show broad prospects for future development.