Controlling spin-to-orbital angular momentum (OAM) conversion plays an important role in many optical and wireless communication applications. While independent control of different circular-polarized (CP) wavefronts could offer an ultimate degree of freedom in designing advanced multifunctional spin devices, most metasurfaces only provide dependent wavefront control. We propose a reflective dual-helicity decoupled coding metasurface to completely realize independent control of OAM vortices for two orthogonal helicities. The element combines both the propagation phase and geometric phase, thus overcoming the inherent limitation encountered by conventional geometric phase elements whose phase responses are constrained to be opposite values for different CP wavefronts. Several design examples for independently generating OAM vortices in the microwave region are presented where a free combination of different OAM modes, helicity, as well as complex spatial beam editing can be fully achieved. Experiments show good agreements with the full-wave simulations, successfully verifying the design theory. The proposed method could offer an alternative platform for designing high-performance devices with independent CP wavefront manipulations, which may enhance the information capacity of metasurfaces and trigger versatile electromagnetic (em) wave function integrations for advanced compact systems.

The concept of dual-polarized reconfigurable reflectarray (RRA) featuring dual-polarized beam control is proposed and demonstrated using a dual-channel programmable metasurface. The p-i-n diodes are incorporated into each metasurface element as the active components to provide independent phase control in two orthogonal polarization channels. By altering the working states of each p-i-n diode, well-defined beam scanning can be obtained. Element design, focal diameter ratio selection, and discretized phase distributions are carefully optimized to ensure stable radiation performance of the proposed RRA. As verification, a prototype consisting of 20 $\times20$ elements is fabricated and measured, which is controlled by a field programmable gate array-based controller. Measured results show that wide-angle beam scanning up to ±40° can be obtained around 7.45 GHz, with peak gains of 21.13 and 20.89 dBi in dual channels, corresponding to aperture efficiencies of 16.35% and 15.47%. The proposed dual-polarized RRA brings a new freedom in polarization manipulations for versatile beam scanning, which provides promising applications in wireless communication and tracking/detecting systems.

Dynamic manipulation of electromagnetic (EM) waves with multiple degrees of freedom plays an essential role in enhancing information processing. Currently, an enormous challenge is to realize directional terahertz (THz) holography. Recently, it was demonstrated that Janus metasurfaces could produce distinct responses to EM waves from two opposite incident directions, making multiplexed dynamic manipulation of THz waves possible. Herein, we show that thermally activated THz Janus metasurfaces integrating with phase change materials on the meta-atoms can produce asymmetric transmission with the designed phase delays. Such reconfigurable Janus metasurfaces can achieve asymmetric focusing of THz wave and directional THz holography with free-space image projections, and particularly the information can be manipulated via temperature and incident THz wave direction. This work not only offers a common strategy for realizing the reconfigurability of Janus metasurfaces, but also shows possible applications in THz optical information encryption, data storage, and smart windows.

Metasurfaces, ultrathin two-dimensional version of metamaterials, have attracted tremendous attention due to their exotic capabilities to freely manipulate electromagnetic waves. By incorporating various tunable materials or elements into metasurface designs, reconfigurable metasurfaces and related metadevices with functionalities controlled by external stimuli can be realized, opening a new avenue to achieving dynamic manipulation of electromagnetic waves. Recently, based on the tunable metasurface concept, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) have received significant attention and have been regarded as a promising emerging technology for future wireless communication due to their potential to enhance the capacity and coverage of wireless networks by smartly reconfiguring the wireless propagation environment. Here, in this article, we first focus on technical issues of RIS system implementation by reviewing the existing research contributions, paying special attention to designs in the microwave regime. Then, we showcase our recent attempts to practically demonstrate RIS systems in real-world applications, including deploying reflective RIS systems in indoor scenarios to enhance the wireless network coverage and utilizing intelligent omni-metasurfaces to improve both indoor and through-wall wireless communication quality. Finally, we give our own perspectives on possible future directions and existing challenges for RISs toward a truly commercial intelligent technology platform.

Active metasurfaces pave a way for manipulating electromagnetic (EM) waves in real-time by incorporating with tunable materials or components, emerging as an attractive solution to achieve versatile EM functionalities in dynamic fashions. However, most of the active metasurfaces demonstrated so far only support tunable responses for a certain single frequency band, or have obvious frequency cross-talks that cannot provide dual-band independent operations, limiting their further uses in practical applications. Here, we propose a 1-bit high-efficiency programmable metasurface to achieve completely independent functions with real-time reconfigurability controlled by FPGA hardware system in both C-band and X-band. Specifically, the metasurface is designed with abilities of generating multi-beams or twin-beam scanning in the low frequency band while dynamic beam-scanning in high frequency band. As the experimental verifications, a double-layered metasurface has been fabricated and tested, and the measured results agree well with the simulations, demonstrating its abilities of independent, high-efficiency, real-time, and programmable manipulation of EM waves in two discrete frequency bands. The proposed concept may largely enhance the information capacity of the metasurface, bringing new degrees of freedom in achieving versatile tunable functionalities and offering useful applications in the radar and wireless communication systems.