Photonic metasurfaces in azobenzene materials

Custom optical fixtures were machined in-house and used to fabricate, in a single step photolithography technique, large-scale photonic metasurfaces, which include quasicrystals and Moiré gratings at the nanoscale on azobenzene molecular glass thin films. The obtained metasurfaces have customizable features depending on the fabrication parameters and the optical setup, which consists mostly of simple optical elements such as multi-faced pyramids, bi-convex lenses, Lloyd interferometer, and a continuous-wave laser for generating the desired interference pattern. Furthermore, these photonic metasurfaces have been used in applications ranging from optical biosensors to enhancing the efficiency of thin film solar cells.