Metasurface Photon Manipulation and Resonance Engineering

Metasurfaces are engineered two-dimensional arrays of subwavelength structures that manipulate the phase, amplitude and polarisation of incident light with unprecedented control. By tailoring the geometry, material composition and symmetry of meta-atoms, researchers have created platforms that support sharp, high-quality resonances and bound states in the continuum, enabling extreme localisation of electromagnetic fields and enhanced light–matter interactions. Resonance engineering in such metasurfaces harnesses leaky modes, Mie resonances, plasmonic excitations and symmetry-protected phenomena to achieve tunable spectral features, ultranarrow linewidths and nontrivial topological properties. This control has underpinned advances in ultrathin optical filters, sensors with record sensitivities, low-threshold nanolasers, nonlinear frequency converters and coherent light sources. Recent progress has focused on integrating excitonic materials, exploiting two-dimensional semiconductors, and embedding active tuning mechanisms to extend operation across the visible, near-infrared and telecom bands, thereby driving global applications in communications, biosensing, imaging and quantum photonics.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have demonstrated intrinsic strong coupling between light and excitons by embedding transition metal dichalcogenide materials directly into bound-state-in-the-continuum metasurfaces. Nanostructured bulk tungsten disulfide platforms realise self-hybridised BIC resonances that overlap excitonic transitions, yielding controllable Rabi splittings of over 100 meV while maintaining narrow linewidths independent of material losses. This approach paves the way for scalable polaritonic devices and integrated light-matter interfaces. In parallel, guided-mode resonances have been pushed to ultrahigh quality factors by introducing a patterned perturbation layer above a multilayer waveguide. The perturbation strength governs the inverse square dependence of the Q factor, and lattice-constant tuning shifts the resonance wavelength across telecom bands. Experimental values exceeding 2 × 10^5 have been reported, promising advances in optical sensing, narrow-band filtering and low-loss photonic circuitry.

Metasurface Photon Manipulation and Resonance Engineering publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in metasurface photon manipulation and resonance engineering across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Metasurface: A planar arrangement of subwavelength structures that tailor the propagation and scattering of light at will.

Bound state in the continuum (BIC): A non-radiative mode embedded in the radiation continuum, exhibiting an infinite theoretical quality factor under ideal symmetry conditions.

Quasi-bound state in the continuum (quasi-BIC): A BIC perturbed by symmetry breaking, rendering it accessible to external excitation while retaining a high but finite quality factor.

Quality factor (Q factor): A dimensionless parameter that quantifies the sharpness of a resonance, defined as the ratio of stored energy to energy dissipated per cycle.

Mie resonance: An electromagnetic mode supported by high-index dielectric particles, arising from the constructive interference of internal and scattered fields.

References

1. Intrinsic strong light-matter coupling with self-hybridized bound states in the continuum in van der Waals metasurfaces. Nature Materials (2023).
2. High‐Q Nanophotonics over the Full Visible Spectrum Enabled by Hexagonal Boron Nitride Metasurfaces. Advanced Materials (2023).
3. Ultrahigh-Q guided mode resonances in an All-dielectric metasurface. Nature Communications (2023).
4. Customizing 2.5D Out‐of‐Plane Architectures for Robust Plasmonic Bound‐States‐in‐the‐Continuum Metasurfaces. Advanced Science (2023).
5. Quasi-bound states in the continuum with a stable resonance wavelength in dimer dielectric metasurfaces. Nanophotonics (2023).