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Nonlinear Optics of Nanostructures and Metasurfaces
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Nonlinear Optics of Nanostructures and Metasurfaces

A special issue of Nanomaterials (ISSN 2079-4991). This special issue belongs to the section "Nanophotonics Materials and Devices".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 March 2026) | Viewed by 8349

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Vin-Cent Su

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Electrical Engineering, National United University, Miaoli 36003, Taiwan
Interests: metasurfaces and their applications; optoelectronics; light-emitting diodes; microelectronics; high electron mobility transistor
Dr. Meng-Hsin Chen

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor Assistant
Institute of Nuclear Energy Research, Atomic Energy Council, Executive Yuan, Taoyuan City 32546, Taiwan
Interests: metasurfaces and their applications; optoelectronics; microelectronics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Nonlinear optics is a long-growing field that studies the nonlinear effect between the electric field of light and matter. Long before lasers were invented, some nonlinear phenomena had been discovered. Early studies focused on birefringent inorganic solids, which exhibit different refractive indexes among different axes to fulfill the phase-matching condition. Using these crystals to develop nonlinear optics applications suffers from several drawbacks, such as being bulky and heavy. The development of metasurfaces has been primarily driven by their fascinating characteristics, such as being ultra-thin, lightweight, and capable of CMOS semiconductor processes. Metasurfaces are composed of sub-wavelength meta-atoms and allow for the production of structured light or the development of nonlinear optics applications.

This Special Issue offers researchers devoted to the topics of nonlinear optics of nanostructures and metasurfaces the opportunity to publish state-of-the-art findings around the world. We aim to broaden the applications of nanostructures and metasurfaces in the realm of nonlinear optics.

We invite research articles related to, but not limited to, the following topics:

  1. Nonlinear metasurfaces;
  2. Nonlinear nanophotonics;
  3. Quantum nonlinear optics;
  4. Nonlinear chiral metasurfaces;
  5. Nonlinear resonant metasurfaces.

Dr. Vin-Cent Su
Guest Editor

Dr. Meng-Hsin Chen
Guest Editor Assistant

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Nanomaterials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • quantum nonlinear optics
  • nonlinear metasurfaces
  • nonlinear nanophotonics
  • nonlinear resonant metasurfaces
  • nonlinear meta-optics

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 3798 KB  
Article
Defect Reduction in HEMT Epilayers on SiC Meta-Substrates
by Vin-Cent Su, Ting-Yu Wei, Meng-Hsin Chen, Chien-Te Ku and Guan-Shian Liu
Nanomaterials 2026, 16(3), 158; https://doi.org/10.3390/nano16030158 - 23 Jan 2026
Viewed by 528
Abstract
Dislocation reduction in gallium nitride (GaN) epitaxial layers remains a critical challenge for high-performance GaN-based electronic devices. In this study, GaN epitaxial growth on newly-developed 4H-Silicon Carbide (SiC) meta-substrates was systematically investigated to elucidate the role of surface pattern geometry in modulating dislocation [...] Read more.
Dislocation reduction in gallium nitride (GaN) epitaxial layers remains a critical challenge for high-performance GaN-based electronic devices. In this study, GaN epitaxial growth on newly-developed 4H-Silicon Carbide (SiC) meta-substrates was systematically investigated to elucidate the role of surface pattern geometry in modulating dislocation propagation. A series of truncated-hexagonal-pyramid meta-structures with a fixed array period and varying pattern ratios (R) were designed and fabricated to enable controlled tuning of the effective surface morphology. Atomic force microscopy confirmed comparable surface flatness for all samples after epitaxial growth. Cathodoluminescence analysis revealed a non-monotonic dependence of defect density on R, indicating the existence of an optimal pattern geometry. Among all configurations, the outstanding sample exhibited the lowest defect density, achieving a 54.96% reduction in threading dislocations (edge + mixed) compared with a planar reference. Cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy further confirmed a substantially reduced dislocation density and clear evidence of dislocation bending and termination near the meta-structured regions. These results demonstrate that geometry-engineered 4H-SiC meta-substrates provide an effective and scalable strategy for dislocation modulation in GaN epitaxy on SiC meta-substrates, offering a promising pathway toward advanced GaN power and RF devices. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nonlinear Optics of Nanostructures and Metasurfaces)
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15 pages, 2428 KB  
Article
Adjoint-Driven Inverse Design of a Quad-Spectral Metasurface Router for RGB-NIR Sensing
by Rishad Arfin, Jeongwoo Son, Jens Niegemann, Dylan McGuire and Mohamed H. Bakr
Nanomaterials 2025, 15(21), 1671; https://doi.org/10.3390/nano15211671 - 3 Nov 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1310
Abstract
There has been an increasing demand for high-resolution image sensing technologies in recent years due to their diverse and advanced optical applications. With recent advances in nanofabrication technologies, this can be achieved through the realization of high-density pixels. However, the development of high-density [...] Read more.
There has been an increasing demand for high-resolution image sensing technologies in recent years due to their diverse and advanced optical applications. With recent advances in nanofabrication technologies, this can be achieved through the realization of high-density pixels. However, the development of high-density and miniaturized pixels introduces challenges to the conventional color filters, which generally transmit and absorb different spectral components of light. A significant portion of the incident light is inherently lost using conventional color filters. Moreover, as the pixel size is shrunk, optical losses appear to be substantial. To address these fundamental limitations, a novel nanophotonic optical router is proposed in this work. Our router utilizes a single-layer, all-dielectric metasurface as a spectral router. The metasurface is designed through an inverse design approach that exploits adjoint sensitivity analysis. A novel figure of merit is developed and incorporated in the inverse design process, enabling the metasurface design to effectively sort and route the incoming light into four targeted channels, each corresponding to a distinct spectral component—red, green, blue, and near-infrared. We demonstrate that the proposed quad-spectral metasurface router, having a compact footprint of 2 μm×2 μm, achieves an average optical efficiency of approximately 39% across the broad spectral range, i.e., 400–850 nm, with each spectral channel exceeding an efficiency of 25%. This surpasses the maximum efficiency attainable by the conventional four-channel color filters. Our proposed quad-spectral metasurface router offers a wide range of applications in low-light imaging, image fusion, computational photography, and computer vision. In addition, this work highlights the applicability of an adjoint-based inverse design approach to accelerate the development of compact, efficient, and high-performance nanophotonic devices for the next generation of imaging and sensing systems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nonlinear Optics of Nanostructures and Metasurfaces)
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13 pages, 2525 KB  
Article
Excitonic-Vibrational Interaction at 2D Material/Organic Molecule Interfaces Studied by Time-Resolved Sum Frequency Generation
by Huiling Chen, Yu Lian, Tao Zhou, Hui Li, Jiashi Li, Xinyi Liu, Yuan Huang and Wei-Tao Liu
Nanomaterials 2024, 14(23), 1892; https://doi.org/10.3390/nano14231892 - 25 Nov 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1817
Abstract
The hybrid heterostructures formed between two-dimensional (2D) materials and organic molecules have gained great interest for their potential applications in advanced photonic and optoelectronic devices, such as solar cells and biosensors. Characterizing the interfacial structure and dynamic properties at the molecular level is [...] Read more.
The hybrid heterostructures formed between two-dimensional (2D) materials and organic molecules have gained great interest for their potential applications in advanced photonic and optoelectronic devices, such as solar cells and biosensors. Characterizing the interfacial structure and dynamic properties at the molecular level is essential for realizing such applications. Here, we report a time-resolved sum-frequency generation (TR-SFG) approach to investigate the hybrid structure of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) molecules and 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs). By utilizing both infrared and visible light, TR-SFG can provide surface-specific information about both molecular vibrations and electronic transitions simultaneously. Our setup employed a Bragg grating for generating both a narrowband probe and an ultrafast pump pulse, along with a synchronized beam chopper and Galvo mirror combination for real-time spectral normalization, which can be readily incorporated into standard SFG setups. Applying this technique to the TMDC/PMMA interfaces yielded structural information regarding PMMA side chains and dynamic responses of both PMMA vibrational modes and TMDC excitonic transitions. We further observed a prominent enhancement effect of the PMMA vibrational SF amplitude for about 10 times upon the resonance with TMDC excitonic transition. These findings lay a foundation for further investigation into interactions at the 2D material/organic molecule interfaces. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nonlinear Optics of Nanostructures and Metasurfaces)
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12 pages, 3384 KB  
Article
A Mid-Infrared Perfect Metasurface Absorber with Tri-Band Broadband Scalability
by Yongtu Zou, Shaolin Zhou, Jingxi Li, Shanri Chen and Zhijian Chen
Nanomaterials 2024, 14(15), 1316; https://doi.org/10.3390/nano14151316 - 5 Aug 2024
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3875
Abstract
Metasurfaces have emerged as a unique group of two-dimensional ultra-compact subwavelength devices for perfect wave absorption due to their exceptional capabilities of light modulation. Nonetheless, achieving high absorption, particularly with multi-band broadband scalability for specialized scenarios, remains a challenge. As an example, the [...] Read more.
Metasurfaces have emerged as a unique group of two-dimensional ultra-compact subwavelength devices for perfect wave absorption due to their exceptional capabilities of light modulation. Nonetheless, achieving high absorption, particularly with multi-band broadband scalability for specialized scenarios, remains a challenge. As an example, the presence of atmospheric windows, as dictated by special gas molecules in different infrared regions, highly demands such scalable modulation abilities for multi-band absorption and filtration. Herein, by leveraging the hybrid effect of Fabry–Perot resonance, magnetic dipole resonance and electric dipole resonance, we achieved multi-broadband absorptivity in three prominent infrared atmospheric windows concurrently, with an average absorptivity of 87.6% in the short-wave infrared region (1.4–1.7 μm), 92.7% in the mid-wave infrared region (3.2–5 μm) and 92.4% in the long-wave infrared region (8–13 μm), respectively. The well-confirmed absorption spectra along with its adaptation to varied incident angles and polarization angles of radiations reveal great potential for fields like infrared imaging, photodetection and communication. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nonlinear Optics of Nanostructures and Metasurfaces)
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