Multifunction planar optics: Specially designed two-dimensional (2D) arrays of nanometer-scale metallic antennas, or metasurfaces, may allow bulky optical components to be shrunk down to a planar device structure. Khorasaninejad et al. show that arrays of nanoscale fins of TiO can function as high-end optical lenses. At just a fraction of the size of optical objectives, such planar devices could turn your phone camera or your contact lens into a compound microscope. Maguid et al. interleaved sparse 2D arrays of metal antennas to get multifunctional behavior from the one planar device structure (see the Perspective by Litchinitser). The enhanced functionality of such designed metasurfaces could be used in sensing applications or to increase the communication capacity of nanophotonic networks. Science , this issue pp. 1190 and 1202 ; see also p. 1177
A metasurface polarization camera: Imaging the polarization of light scattered from an object provides an additional degree of freedom for gaining information from a scene. Conventional polarimeters can be bulky and usually consist of mechanically moving parts (with a polarizer and analyzer setup rotating to reveal the degree of polarization). Rubinet al.designed a metasurface-based full-Stokes compact polarization camera without conventional polarization optics and without moving parts. The results provide a simplified route for polarization imaging.Science, this issue p.eaax1839