Multifunctional Dielectric Metasurfaces Consisting of Color Holograms Encoded into Color Printed Images

A hologram records the wavefront of light from an object, but it is usually not an image itself, and looks unintelligible under diffuse ambient light. Here a new paradigm to encode a color hologram onto a color printed image is experimentally demonstrated. The printed image can be directly viewed under white light illumination, while a low‐crosstalk color holographic image can be seen when the device is illuminated with red (R), green (G), and blue (B) laser beams. The device is a dielectric metasurface that consists of titanium dioxide (TiO2) cones on a glass substrate. The dimensions of the TiO2 cones are chosen to allow them to support visible‐wavelength resonances, thereby producing the desired reflection spectra and thus the color printed image. The detour phase method is furthermore used to encode the hologram into the metasurface. The approach is conceptually different from previously demonstrated color printed images or holograms and presents opportunities for optical document security and data storage applications. A dielectric metasurface that can simultaneously work as a color printed image (viewed with a brightfield microscope) and a far‐field color hologram (viewed by illuminating the device by red/green/blue lasers) is presented. Two printed images that appear the same can reconstruct two different holographic images. This work provides opportunities for optical document security and data storage applications.