A metasurface-on-fiber light-sheet generator for biological imaging

Light sheet has been widely used for bioimaging. However, it is a big challenge to build a miniature light-sheet imaging system due to geometric constraints of bulky refractive and diffractive elements. Metasurface-based devices composed of subwavelength unit cells, with compact size and the ability to effectively manipulate optical fields, have been considered as potential planar analogs of conventional components to realize various functionalities. Integrating metasurfaces onto an optical fiber facet is sparking new ideas and emerging applications. Here, we propose a metasurface-on-fiber light-sheet generator, which can convert a fiber mode to a thin light sheet. By adopting a multi-core fiber and a dielectric metasurface on its facet, a light sheet with a thickness of 2 mu m and a length of 83.0 mu m is obtained. The generator can greatly simplify the illumination of light sheet imaging systems and be flexibly used for advanced biological imaging applications.