Direction-Decoupled Light-Emitting Metasurface via Guided-Photoluminescence Manipulation

Abstract

On-demand manipulation of light emissions is crucial for a variety of practical applications, including bio-imaging and optical display, etc. Within this realm, the invention of metasurfaces provides powerful light–matter interaction capabilities for the control of multitudinous emission parameters. However, due to the omnidirectional, random, and incoherent nature of photoluminescence (PL) emission, the multiplexing modulation of PL remains a challenge and is rarely realized. Here, a direction-decoupled light-emitting metasurface (LEM) is originally demonstrated to display dual-channel independent incoherent-emission images based on guided-PL manipulation. Utilizing the wavevector differences of guided-PL between opposite pumping directions, the LEM is designed to enable selective unidirectional emission, thereby decoupling the directional freedom for PL multiplexing and realizing dual meta-display. Besides, the direction-multiplexed LEM can be integrated simultaneously with pumping-light holography for multi-dimensional meta-display. Such programmable unidirectional emission manipulation and direction-multiplexed PL meta-display approaches promise light-emitting techniques and can potentially find applications in multiplexing display, optical storage and encryption, etc.