Research Article

Synthesis of electromagnetic metasurfaces: principles and illustrations

¹ Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Polytechnique Montréal, Montréal, QC H2T 1J3, Canada
² Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept. King Abdulaziz University, P.O. Box 80204, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia

^* e-mail: karim.achouri@polymtl.ca

Received: 1 September 2015
Accepted: 19 November 2015
Published online: 26 January 2016

Abstract

The paper presents partial overview of the mathematical synthesis and the physical realization of metasurfaces, and related illustrative examples. The synthesis consists in determining the exact tensorial surface susceptibility functions of the metasurface, based on generalized sheet transition conditions, while the realization deals with both metallic and dielectric scattering particle structures. The examples demonstrate the capabilities of the synthesis and realization techniques, thereby showing the plethora of possible metasurface field transmission and subsequent applications. The first example is the design of two diffraction engineering birefringent metasurfaces performing polarization beam splitting and orbital angular momentum multiplexing, respectively. Next, we discuss the concept of the electromagnetic remotely controlled metasurface spatial processor, which is an electromagnetic linear switch based on destructive interferences. Then, we introduce a non-reciprocal non-gyrotropic metasurface using a pick-up circuit radiator (PCR) architecture. Finally, the implementation of all-dielectric metasurfaces for frequency dispersion engineering is discussed.