Metasurface-based nanoprinting: principle, design and advances

Metasurface-based nanoprinting (meta-nanoprinting) has fully demonstrated its advantages in ultrahigh-density grayscale/color image recording and display. A typical meta-nanoprinting device usually has image resolutions reaching 80 k dots per inch (dpi), far exceeding conventional technology such as gravure printing (typ. 5 k dpi). Besides, by fully exploiting the design degrees of freedom of nanostructured metasurfaces, meta-nanoprinting has been developed from previous single-channel to multiple-channels, to current multifunctional integration or even dynamic display. In this review, we overview the development of meta-nanoprinting, including the physics of nanoprinting to manipulate optical amplitude and spectrum, single-functional meta-nanoprinting, multichannel meta-nanoprinting, dynamic meta-nanoprinting and multifunctional metasurface integrating nanoprinting with holography or metalens, etc. Applications of meta-nanoprinting such as image display, vortex beam generation, information decoding and hiding, information encryption, high-density optical storage and optical anti-counterfeiting have also been discussed. Finally, we conclude the opportunities and challenges/perspectives in this rapidly developing research field of meta-nanoprinting.