Multiplexed supercell metasurface design and optimization with tandem residual networks

Complex nanophotonic structures hold the potential to deliver exquisitely tailored optical responses for a range of applications. Metal–insulator–metal (MIM) metasurfaces arranged in supercells, for instance, can be tailored by geometry and material choice to exhibit a variety of absorption properties and resonant wavelengths. With this flexibility, however, comes a vast space of design possibilities that classical design paradigms struggle to effectively navigate. To overcome this challenge, here, we demonstrate a tandem residual network approach to efficiently generate multiplexed supercells through inverse design. By using a training dataset with several thousand full-wave electromagnetic simulations in a design space of over three trillion possible designs, the deep learning model can accurately generate a wide range of complex supercell designs given a spectral target. Beyond inverse design, the presented approach can also be used to explore the structure–property relationships of broadband absorption and emission in such supercell configurations. Thus, this study demonstrates the feasibility of high-dimensional supercell inverse design with deep neural networks, which is applicable to complex nanophotonic structures composed of multiple subunit elements that exhibit coupling.