Fig. 1. Schematic of the proposed light modulating device inspired by Babinet’s principle’s complementary parts of the diffractive surface. (a) An optimized mask is meant to produce a pattern of one of the holograms (airplane in this case). (b) The complementary one is to produce another holographic pattern (such as the music note here). Each pixel has the pitch of 250 nm × 250 nm.

Fig. 2. (a) Numerical decomposition of a complex number U_Σ in terms of a simple summation of two vectors at the complex plane. Each complex number can be expressed equivalently by a vector at the complex plane. Thus, the summation of two complex numbers is visualized by using a summation of two vectors, which helps to understand the hidden mathematics in our proposed physical model. (b) Ideal holographic images with some typical points from P₁ to P₄ that are labelled for better discussion. (c) Physical solutions for different target intensity profiles in both images. (d), (e) Simulated holographic images from (d) the mask and (e) its complementary mask.

Fig. 3. (a) SEM images of our fabricated mask under different fields of view. (b) Schematic of the experimental setup used to measure the holographic images. L, Lens; PH, pinhole. (c), (d) Measured images of (c) ‘airplane’ and (d) ‘music note’ from complementary masks. Scalebars: 20 µm. (e), (f) Simulated (red) and experimental (blue) line scanning intensity profiles of (e) “air plane” and (f) “music note” images. The inserts denote the positions where the line-scanning intensity is selected for both images.

Fig. 4. (a), (b) Measured broadband images “airplane” and “music note” at the wavelengths from 430 nm to 650 nm with a step of 10 nm. (c) Calculated RMSE between the simulated and experimental images for the airplane (blue dots) and the music note (orange stars).

Fig. 5. (a) Schematic of the future application for a light modulating device inspired by Babinet’s principle’s complementary parts of the diffractive surface. The transmission of a metasurface is meant to produce a pattern of one of the holograms, while the reflection works as a complementary mask to produce another holographic pattern. (b), (c) Measured images in the (b) reflection and (c) transmission sides. Scalebars: 25 µm.