Scalable and High-Throughput Top-Down Manufacturing of Optical Metasurfaces

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 20; no. 15; p. 4108
• Main Authors: Lee, Taejun, Lee, Chihun, Oh, Dong Kyo, Badloe, Trevon, Ok, Jong G, Rho, Junsuk
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 23.07.2020; MDPI
• Subjects: Commercialization; high-throughput; large-scale; Light; Manufacturing; metadevices; Metasurfaces; Methods; Microscopy; nanofabrication; Optical components; Production methods; Review; scalable; scalable; high-throughput; nanofabrication; nanopatterning; top-down fabrication; lithography; large-scale; metasurfaces; metadevices
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s20154108

Metasurfaces have shown promising potential to miniaturize existing bulk optical components thanks to their extraordinary optical properties and ultra-thin, small, and lightweight footprints. However, the absence of proper manufacturing methods has been one of the main obstacles preventing the practical application of metasurfaces and commercialization. Although a variety of fabrication techniques have been used to produce optical metasurfaces, there are still no universal scalable and high-throughput manufacturing methods that meet the criteria for large-scale metasurfaces for device/product-level applications. The fundamentals and recent progress of the large area and high-throughput manufacturing methods are discussed with practical device applications. We systematically classify various top-down scalable patterning techniques for optical metasurfaces: firstly, optical and printing methods are categorized and then their conventional and unconventional (emerging/new) techniques are discussed in detail, respectively. In the end of each section, we also introduce the recent developments of metasurfaces realized by the corresponding fabrication methods.