Switchable transmissive and reflective metadevices based on the phase transition of vanadium dioxide

Metasurfaces have made great progress in the past decade in generating various planar optical devices. However, most metasurfaces exhibit their functions in either reflection mode or transmission mode, with the other mode unutilized. In this work, we demonstrate switchable transmissive and reflective metadevices by combining metasurfaces with vanadium dioxide. The composite metasurface can work as a transmissive metadevice, with one function for vanadium dioxide in the insulating phase, and is changed to a reflective metadevice with another function for vanadium dioxide in the metallic phase. By carefully designing the structures, the metasurface can be switched from a transmissive metalens to a reflective vortex generator, or between a transmissive beam steering and a reflective quarter-wave plate through the phase transition of vanadium dioxide. The switchable transmissive and reflective metadevices have potential applications in imaging, communication, and information processing.