Metamaterials are artificially fabricated materials that allow for the control of light and acoustic waves in a manner that is not possible in nature. This Review covers the recent developments in the study of so-called metasurfaces, which offer the possibility of controlling light with ultrathin, planar optical components. Conventional optical components such as lenses, waveplates and holograms rely on light propagation over distances much larger than the wavelength to shape wavefronts. In this way substantial changes of the amplitude, phase or polarization of light waves are gradually accumulated along the optical path. This Review focuses on recent developments on flat, ultrathin optical components dubbed 'metasurfaces' that produce abrupt changes over the scale of the free-space wavelength in the phase, amplitude and/or polarization of a light beam. Metasurfaces are generally created by assembling arrays of miniature, anisotropic light scatterers (that is, resonators such as optical antennas). The spacing between antennas and their dimensions are much smaller than the wavelength. As a result the metasurfaces, on account of Huygens principle, are able to mould optical wavefronts into arbitrary shapes with subwavelength resolution by introducing spatial variations in the optical response of the light scatterers. Such gradient metasurfaces go beyond the well-established technology of frequency selective surfaces made of periodic structures and are extending to new spectral regions the functionalities of conventional microwave and millimetre-wave transmit-arrays and reflect-arrays. Metasurfaces can also be created by using ultrathin films of materials with large optical losses. By using the controllable abrupt phase shifts associated with reflection or transmission of light waves at the interface between lossy materials, such metasurfaces operate like optically thin cavities that strongly modify the light spectrum. Technology opportunities in various spectral regions and their potential advantages in replacing existing optical components are discussed.

Flat Optics With Designer Metasurfaces

Nanocrystals (NCs) discussed in this Review are tiny crystals of metals, semiconductors, and magnetic material consisting of hundreds to a few thousand atoms each. Their size ranges from 2-3 to about 20 nm. What is special about this size regime that placed NCs among the hottest research topics of the last decades? The quantum mechanical coupling * To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: dvtalapin@uchicago.edu. † The University of Chicago. ‡ Argonne National Lab. Chem. Rev. 2010, 110, 389–458 389

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Prospects of Colloidal Nanocrystals for Electronic and Optoelectronic Applications

Topological photonics is a rapidly emerging field of research in which geometrical and topological ideas are exploited to design and control the behavior of light. Drawing inspiration from the discovery of the quantum Hall effects and topological insulators in condensed matter, recent advances have shown how to engineer analogous effects also for photons, leading to remarkable phenomena such as the robust unidirectional propagation of light, which hold great promise for applications. Thanks to the flexibility and diversity of photonics systems, this field is also opening up new opportunities to realize exotic topological models and to probe and exploit topological effects in new ways. This article reviews experimental and theoretical developments in topological photonics across a wide range of experimental platforms, including photonic crystals, waveguides, metamaterials, cavities, optomechanics, silicon photonics, and circuit QED. A discussion of how changing the dimensionality and symmetries of photonics systems has allowed for the realization of different topological phases is offered, and progress in understanding the interplay of topology with non-Hermitian effects, such as dissipation, is reviewed. As an exciting perspective, topological photonics can be combined with optical nonlinearities, leading toward new collective phenomena and novel strongly correlated states of light, such as an analog of the fractional quantum Hall effect.

Topological Photonics

Doping is a widely applied technological process in materials science that involves incorporating atoms or ions of appropriate elements into host lattices to yield hybrid materials with desirable properties and functions. For nanocrystalline materials, doping is of fundamental importance in stabilizing a specific crystallographic phase, modifying electronic properties, modulating magnetism as well as tuning emission properties. Here we describe a material system in which doping influences the growth process to give simultaneous control over the crystallographic phase, size and optical emission properties of the resulting nanocrystals. We show that NaYF(4) nanocrystals can be rationally tuned in size (down to ten nanometres), phase (cubic or hexagonal) and upconversion emission colour (green to blue) through use of trivalent lanthanide dopant ions introduced at precisely defined concentrations. We use first-principles calculations to confirm that the influence of lanthanide doping on crystal phase and size arises from a strong dependence on the size and dipole polarizability of the substitutional dopant ion. Our results suggest that the doping-induced structural and size transition, demonstrated here in NaYF(4) upconversion nanocrystals, could be extended to other lanthanide-doped nanocrystal systems for applications ranging from luminescent biological labels to volumetric three-dimensional displays.

Simultaneous phase and size control of upconversion nanocrystals through lanthanide doping

The term photonic crystals appears because of the analogy between electron waves in crystals and the light waves in artificial periodic dielectric structures. During the recent years the investigation of one-, two-and three-dimensional periodic structures has attracted a widespread attention of the world optics community because of great potentiality of such structures in advanced applied optical fields. The interest in periodic structures has been stimulated by the fast development of semiconductor technology that now allows the fabrication of artificial structures, whose period is comparable with the wavelength of light in the visible and infrared ranges.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/6354/16969/00781867.pdf

Photonic crystals

A driving force in the rapidly developing field of photonic crystals has been the photonic bandgap, a range of energies where the propagation of light is completely forbidden. The photonic bandgap allows the design of photonic lattices that localize, guide and bend light at sub-micron length scales, providing opportunities for the creation of miniature optical devices and integrated optical circuits to help drive the revolution in photonics. A less well known attribute of photonic crystals is their theoretical ability to slow light to a velocity of zero. This phenomenon can be achieved at the high and low energy edges of photonic stopgaps where the photonic bands are flat and light exists as a standing wave commensurate with the photonic lattice and travels at a group velocity of zero, referred to as “slow photons” herein. It has been shown theoretically that the probability of harvesting slow photons scales inversely with their group velocity. This means that a number of well known photon driven processes and devices in chemistry and physics can be enhanced by capturing this unique property of slow photons. In this paper we will look at slow photons mainly through the eye of chemistry and highlight some recent developments in this exciting and emerging field that demonstrate the potential of slow photons in materials chemistry and nanochemistry.

Slow photons in the fast lane in chemistry

Three‐Dimensional Bi‐Chiral Photonic Crystals

3D Bi‐chiral Photonic Crystals: Three‐Dimensional Bi‐Chiral Photonic Crystals (Adv. Mater. 46/2009)

We report a bottom-up synthesis of a photochemically and thermally active azobenzene-based polyelectrolyte multilayer (PEM) planar defect embedded in a colloidal photonic crystal (CPC). Both photoisomerization and thermal cycling lead to a precise tuning of an intragap transmitting state induced by the PEM structural defect.

Photochemically and thermally tunable planar defects in colloidal photonic crystals.

We report the fabrication of high-Q polymeric microdisks on silicon via direct laser writing utilizing two-photon absorption induced polymerization. The quality factors of the passive cavities are above 106 in the 1300 nm wavelength region. The flexible three-dimensional (3D) lithography method allows for the fabrication of different cavity thicknesses on the same substrate, useful for rapid prototyping of active and passive optical microcavities. Microdisk lasers are realized by doping the resist with dye, resulting in laser emission at visible wavelengths.

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Georg von Freymann

Papers

Slow photons in the fast lane in chemistry

Three‐Dimensional Bi‐Chiral Photonic Crystals

3D Bi‐chiral Photonic Crystals: Three‐Dimensional Bi‐Chiral Photonic Crystals (Adv. Mater. 46/2009)

Photochemically and thermally tunable planar defects in colloidal photonic crystals.

Direct laser writing for active and passive high-Q polymer microdisks on silicon