Omnidirectional Circularly Polarized Thermal Radiation Enabled by Chiral Metasurface

Recently, thermal chiral metasurfaces have attracted significant attentions due to their remarkable ability to manipulate thermal radiation, finding broad applications in chiral imaging, and holographic technologies. However, the design of symmetry‐broken structures with both high circular dichroism (CD) and practical manufacturability remains challenging. This work reports a mid‐infrared (MIR) chiral metasurface with spin‐selective absorption, achieving near‐unity left‐handed circular polarization emissivity at 5.77 μm induced by localized resonance enhancement, which is more than eight times higher than that in the opposite polarization, corresponding to a high CD of 0.84. Momentum‐space analysis of angular emissivity spectra demonstrate that the proposed metasurface achieves a high circular polarization response across wide angular range, and the net optical helicity reaches 54% of the fundamental limit. The experimentally measured absorptivity spectrum and thermal images further prove that the proposed metasurface can function directly as a compact wide‐angle MIR thermal emitter, opening avenues for high‐performance on‐chip sensing and imaging applications.

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Publication Details

Journal
Small Structures
Published
2025-08-28
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/sstr.202500363
Primary Topic
Thermal Radiation and Cooling Technologies
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Omnidirectional Circularly Polarized Thermal Radiation Enabled by Chiral Metasurface

Kaile Sun, Lianjie Li, Yungui Ma, Qunxing Huang et al.
Small Structures
Thermal Radiation and Cooling Technologies
article

Omnidirectional Circularly Polarized Thermal Radiation Enabled by Chiral Metasurface

Kaile Sun, Lianjie Li, Yungui Ma, Qunxing Huang, Yifan Shou, Bingtao Gao, Ying Li, Yanxiang Wang, Hongsheng Chen, C. Y. Ng, Tianle Chen
article en

Abstract

Recently, thermal chiral metasurfaces have attracted significant attentions due to their remarkable ability to manipulate thermal radiation, finding broad applications in chiral imaging, and holographic technologies. However, the design of symmetry‐broken structures with both high circular dichroism (CD) and practical manufacturability remains challenging. This work reports a mid‐infrared (MIR) chiral metasurface with spin‐selective absorption, achieving near‐unity left‐handed circular polarization emissivity at 5.77 μm induced by localized resonance enhancement, which is more than eight times higher than that in the opposite polarization, corresponding to a high CD of 0.84. Momentum‐space analysis of angular emissivity spectra demonstrate that the proposed metasurface achieves a high circular polarization response across wide angular range, and the net optical helicity reaches 54% of the fundamental limit. The experimentally measured absorptivity spectrum and thermal images further prove that the proposed metasurface can function directly as a compact wide‐angle MIR thermal emitter, opening avenues for high‐performance on‐chip sensing and imaging applications.

Small StructuresVol. 6(11)
Jinhua Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CN), Zhejiang Lab (CN), Zhejiang University (CN)
National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Key Research and Development Program of China, Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province
Openalex Percentile: Top 76%
Thermal Radiation and Cooling Technologies
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