Anisotropic metamaterial-assisted all-silicon polarizer with 415-nm bandwidth

Polarizers have been widely used in various optical systems to reduce polarization cross talk. The polarizers based on the silicon nanowire waveguide can provide chip-scale device size and a high polarization extinction ratio. However, the working bandwidth for the on-chip silicon polarizers is always limited ( 20  dB) over a >415  nm bandwidth from 1.26 to 1.675 μm, which is at least fourfold better than what has been demonstrated in all previous works. To the best of our knowledge, such a device is the first all-silicon polarizer that covers O-, E-, S-, C-, L-, and U-bands.