Detection of optical activity with diode-integrated hyperbolic metasurfaces

Area of Science:

• Optics and Photonics
• Materials Science
• Analytical Chemistry

Background:

• Optical activity detection is vital in pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences.
• Current polarimeters can be complex and costly.
• Miniaturization of polarimetric sensing systems is desirable.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present an analytical technique for designing integrated polarized light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and polarization-sensitive photodiodes (PD) based on hyperbolic metasurfaces (HMS).
• To enable compact and efficient detection of optical activity.
• To reduce the complexity and cost of polarimetric sensing systems.

Main Methods:

• Utilized effective medium theory and the scattering matrix method.
• Derived conditions for optimizing transmission efficiency in LED-integrated HMS.
• Derived conditions for optimizing absorption efficiency in PD-integrated HMS.
• Proposed a differential detection technique with orthogonally oriented PD-integrated HMS.

Main Results:

• Optimized transmission and absorption efficiencies for HMS-integrated LEDs and PDs.
• Demonstrated a compact system for measuring optical activity.
• Estimated system performance showing reduced complexity without sacrificing resolution compared to state-of-the-art polarimeters.

Conclusions:

• The proposed hyperbolic metasurface-based technique offers a significant reduction in the size and cost of polarimeters.
• This advancement is highly beneficial for pharmaceutical and biomedical applications requiring optical activity measurements.
• The developed analytical technique provides a pathway for next-generation compact polarimetric sensing systems.