Broadband transmission-reflection-integrated metasurface capable of arbitrarily polarized wavefront manipulation in full space

In modern science and technology, on-demand control of the polarization and wavefront of electromagnetic (EM) waves is crucial for compact opto-electronic systems. Metasurfaces composed of subwavelength array structures inject infinite vitality to shape this fantastic concept, which has fundamentally changed the way humans engineer matter–wave interactions. However, achieving full-space arbitrarily polarized beams with independent wavefronts in broadband on a single metasurface aperture still remains challenging. Herein, the authors propose a generic method for broadband transmission-reflection-integrated wavefronts shaping with multichannel arbitrary polarization regulation from 8 to 16 GHz, which is based on the chirality effect of full-space non-interleaved tetrameric meta-molecules. Through superimposing eigen-polarization responses of the two kinds of enantiomers, the possibility for high-efficiency evolution of several typical polarization states with specific wavefronts is demonstrated. As proofs-of-concept, the feasibility of our methodology is validated via implementing miscellaneous functionalities, including circularly polarized (CP) beam splitting, linearly polarized (LP) vortex beams generation, and CP and LP multifoci. Meanwhile, numerous simulated and experimental results are in excellent agreement with the theoretical predictions. Encouragingly, this proposed approach imaginatively merges broadband polarization and phase control into one single full-space and shared-aperture EM device, which can extremely enhance the functional richness and information capacity in advanced integrated systems.