Dual-band achromatic metalens-assisted grating couplers for wavelength demultiplexing

The design of grating couplers (GCs) that can (de)multiplex and couple arbitrarily defined spatial light into photonic devices is crucial for miniaturized integrated chips. However, traditional GCs have a limited optical bandwidth due to their wavelength's dependency on the coupling angle. In this paper, we propose a device that addresses this limitation by combining a dual-broadband achromatic metalens (ML) with two focusing GCs. By controlling the frequency dispersion, the waveguide-mode-based ML achieves excellent dual-broadband achromatic convergence and separates broadband spatial light into opposing directions at normal incidence. The focused and separated light field matches the grating diffractive mode field and is then coupled into two waveguides by the GCs. This ML-assisted GCs device exhibits a good broadband property with -3 dB bandwidths of 80 nm at 1.31 µm (CE ∼ -6 dB) and 85 nm at 1.51 µm (CE ∼ -5 dB), which almost covers the entire designed working bands, representing an improvement over traditional spatial light-GC coupling. This device can be integrated into optical transceivers and dual-band photodetectors to enhance the bandwidth of wavelength (de)multiplexing.