Non-Interleaved Four-Channel Metasurfaces for Simultaneous Printing and Holographic Imaging

Simultaneous realization of printing and holographic images has become an emerging and promising technology for optical storage and anti-counterfeiting, which can significantly enhance the information capacity and security of an optical system. Herein, a non-interleaved four-channel metasurface based on opposite-chirality-coexisted meta-atoms is proposed, which can simultaneously support four independent circular polarization (CP) information channels, including two near-field printing channels and two far-field holography channels. In addition, due to the chiral resonance properties, the operation frequencies of these four polarization channels can also be flexibly designed to simultaneously achieve polarization multiplexing and frequency multiplexing. As a proof of concept, two four-channel metasurfaces, one of which works at a single frequency and the other works at two different frequencies, are designed and validated numerically and experimentally. It is shown in the results that two printing and two holographic images with different handedness can be stored at one frequency or two different frequencies through the flexible design of metasurface. This four-channel metasurface provides a new avenue for the design of future photonic devices with highly integrated and multiple functionalities, and may have an advantage in diverse potential applications, such as advanced anti-counterfeits, optical data storage, and image displays.