Near-infrared quarter-waveplate with near-unity polarization conversion efficiency based on silicon nanowire array

Metasurfaces made of subwavelength resonators can modify the wave front of light within the thickness much less than free space wavelength, showing great promises in integrated optics. In this paper, we theoretically show that electric and magnetic resonances supported simultaneously by a subwavelength nanowire with high refractive-index can be utilized to design metasurfaces with near-unity transmittance. Taking silicon nanowire for instance, we design numerically a near-infrared quarter-waveplate with high transmittance using a subwavelength nanowire array. The operation bandwidth of the waveplate is 0.14 mu m around the center wavelength of 1.71 mu m. The waveplate can convert a 45 degrees linearly polarized incident light to circularly polarized light with conversion efficiency ranging from 94% to 98% over the operation band. The performance of quarter waveplate can in principle be tuned and improved through optimizing the parameters of nanowire arrays. Its compatibility to microelectronic technologies opens up a distinct possibility to integrate nanophotonics into the current silicon-based electronic devices. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America