The invention of tiny devices capable of precisely controlling the direction and behavior of light is essential to the development of advanced technologies. Researchers at the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) have taken a significant step forward with the development of a metasurface that can turn invisible infrared light into visible light and aim it in different directions—without any moving parts. The details of their work are explained in a paper published in the journal eLight.

The novel metasurface is constructed of an ultra-thin chip patterned with tiny structures smaller than the wavelength of light. When hit with an infrared laser, the chip converts the incoming light to a higher color (or frequency) and sends the new light out as a narrow beam that can be steered simply by changing how the incoming light is polarized.

In their experiments, the team converted infrared light around 1,530 nanometers—similar to the light used in fiber-optic communications—into visible green light near 510 nanometers and steered it to chosen angles.