Prof. Qi Jiaran’s Team Designs Breakthrough Non-Interleaved Shared-Aperture Full-Stokes Metalens

A research team led by Professor Jiaran Qi from SEIE has made significant progress in the field of high-resolution full-Stokes polarization imaging. They have developed a novel non-interleaved shared-aperture full-Stokes metalens using a prior-knowledge-driven inverse design methodology. This innovation overcomes the limitations in efficiency, resolution, contrast, and integration level associated with traditional metalens-based full-Stokes polarization cameras .

The related research findings, titled Non-Interleaved Shared-Aperture Full-Stokes Metalens via Prior-Knowledge-Driven Inverse Design, have been published in the prestigious journal Advanced Materials and selected as the cover article for Issue 11, 2025 . This research holds application value in areas such as terrain mapping, target shape reconstruction, land cover classification, and aircraft attitude perception .

Technical Breakthrough

Metasurface technology offers a promising path towards lightweight, integrated full-Stokes polarization cameras. However, conventional designs largely rely on interleaved or cascaded structures, which lead to issues like performance degradation, time-consuming measurements, bulky size, and alignment complexities, thereby limiting the development of highly integrated, instantaneous full-Stokes polarization cameras .

To address this bottleneck, Professor Qi's team innovatively introduced constraints related to full-polarization detection and diffraction-limited imaging directly into the inverse design process of the metalens. They proposed a new model suitable for prior-knowledge-driven inverse design, enabling the creation of a diffraction-limited full-Stokes polarization camera based on the metalens. This approach breaks the inherent limitations of efficiency and resolution found in interleaved designs .

Experimental Validation and Applications

The team validated the full-polarization diffraction-limited imaging performance of the metalens in the W-band. They set up an experimental passive millimeter-wave full-Stokes polarization camera, successfully achieving instantaneous, high-performance full-polarization detection and imaging. This reduces reliance on the costly and complex ortho-mode transducers and broadband correlators required in traditional polarimetric radiometers .

Furthermore, the team proposed a 3D reconstruction algorithm, verifying the feasibility of using multi-polarization information for non-contact surface gradient measurement. The proposed passive millimeter-wave full-Stokes polarization camera, used with a high-precision turntable, achieved millimeter-level non-contact surface gradient reconstruction over a large field of view, demonstrating its potential for terrain mapping and object shape reconstruction .

Research Team and Support

Harbin Institute of Technology is the sole corresponding institution for this paper. Professor Jiaran Qi and Associate Professor Yayun Cheng from the School of Electronics and Information Engineering are the co-corresponding authors. Doctoral candidates Wang Yuzhong, Wang Yifei, and master's student Yu Axiang are the co-first authors. Master's student Hu Mingshuang and doctoral candidates Wang Qiming, Pang Cheng, and Xiong Huimin also contributed to the research .

The research was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Outstanding Youth Science Fund of the Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province, among other projects .

Paper Link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202408978