Frequency and Angle Multiplexed Metadevices with Multifunctional Polarization Modulation

Multifunctional polarization controllers are highly desirable in numerous fields due to their potential applications. Although the emergence of metasurfaces provides a powerful platform for manipulating the polarization of electromagnetic waves, metasurfaces have not yet enabled multifunctional controllers. Here, this work demonstrates an effective strategy to design a multifunctional polarization controller through the integration of frequency and angular multiplexing. As an experimental proof, a non-planar dual-multiplexed metadevice composed of a chiral metagrating array and an anisotropic metasurface is fabricated by printed circuit board technology. The experiments show that at least five distinct functions, including ultra-broadband linear-to-circular polarization conversion in 2.5–6.3 GHz, ultra-broadband linear-to-linear polarization conversion in 6.6–11.0 GHz, strong optical activity between 11.4 and 12.2 GHz, giant linear and circular dichroism ≈5.96 and 12.97 GHz, respectively, can be accomplished by the proposed meta-multiplexer. Hence, the proposed metadevice can act as high-efficiency bifunctional waveplate, polarization rotator, linear polarizer, chiral metamirror, and so on, enabling more application flexibility. The concept of integrating multidimensional multiplexing proposed here will be of great benefit to the design of novel multifunctional polarization controllers.