Conformable holographic metasurfaces for industrial imaging and sensing applications

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Photonic metasurfaces are nano-structured films that can be designed to exhibit tailored light scattering. The phase, amplitude, polarisation and propagation of direction of the reflected and transmitted light can be controlled virtually at will. When used to record holographic information, photonic metasurfaces present many advantages over standard computer-generated holographic devices, mostly related to their ultrathin form factor (a thousand times thinner than conventional diffraction optical elements) and subwavelength dimension of the pixels. Moreover, holographic metasurfaces can be realised in flexible and conformable substrates, which makes them the ideal platform for out of the lab implementation. Ceres Holographics is a leading company in holographic solutions for automotive applications and in this project has partnered with the groups of Synthetic Optics and Organic Semiconductors to take the metasurface technology one step closer to industrial, real-world applications. The aim of the project is to develop a viable and sustainable design and manufacturing pathway for flexible holographic metasurfaces for augmented vision applications. The student will learn how to design holographic metasurfaces for non-flat shapes and develop a scalable fabrication technique based on nanolithography and nanoimprinting. Additionally, the student will exploit the unique properties of metasurfaces to embed sensing capabilities, so that the holographic imaging would depend on specific environmental conditions. This work will be complemented by an extensive experimental activity and completed exploiting the facilities available in the School of Physics and Astronomy of the University of St Andrews and at Ceres Holographics.