Quantitative determination of in-plane optical anisotropy by surface plasmon resonance holographic microscopy

Jiwei Zhang; Wenrui Li; Jiahao Li; Yujie Zhang; Xiaoqing Chen; Xiangyuan Luo; Siqing Dai; Xuetao Gan; Jianlin Zhao

doi:10.1038/s41377-026-02207-7

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Quantitative determination of in-plane optical anisotropy by surface plasmon resonance holographic microscopy

Original Articles

- Quantitative determination of in-plane optical anisotropy by surface plasmon resonance holographic microscopy
- Light: Science & Applications Vol. 15, Issue 5, Pages: 1703-1711(2026)
- Affiliations：
  
  1.Key Laboratory of Light Field Manipulation and Information Acquisition, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Optical Information Technology, School of Physical Science and Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China
  2.School of Artificial Intelligence, Optics and Electronics (iOPEN), Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China
- Author bio：
  
  Siqing Dai (siqing.dai@nwpu.edu.cn)
  Xuetao Gan (xuetaogan@nwpu.edu.cn)
  Jianlin Zhao (jlzhao@nwpu.edu.cn)
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1038/s41377-026-02207-7
  CLC：
- Received：25 June 2025，
  
  Revised：2026-01-21，
  
  Accepted：22 January 2026，
  
  Online First：06 March 2026，
  
  Published：31 May 2026
- Accepted：
Scan QR Code
Zhang, J. W. et al. Quantitative determination of in-plane optical anisotropy by surface plasmon resonance holographic microscopy. Light: Science & Applications, 15, 1703-1711 (2026).
DOI：

Zhang, J. W. et al. Quantitative determination of in-plane optical anisotropy by surface plasmon resonance holographic microscopy. Light: Science & Applications, 15, 1703-1711 (2026). DOI： 10.1038/s41377-026-02207-7.

摘要

Abstract

Quantitative determination of in-plane optical anisotropy is essential in finding or designing anisotropic low-dimensional materials and investigating their physical properties. Current determination methods are mostly qualitative or using empirical equations for quantitative calculation. A common weakness of these methods is utilizing light-matter interactions between far-field light and material samples which relies on long interaction distance. However

the thin thickness of low-dimensional material

especially atomic-layer sample

induces an exceeding short light-matter interaction distance and results in low signal-to-noise ratio as well as inaccurate measurement result. In this paper

we propose a novel determination method for in-plane optical anisotropy called azimuthal scanning excitation surface plasmon resonance holographic microscopy. This method utilizes near-field light-matter interactions between material samples and surface plasmon waves oscillating along various in-plane directions. The sample complex refractive indices along all of the in-plane directions can be quantitatively retrieved and thus the magnitude of in-plane optical anisotropy

including birefringence and dichroism

is determined. This method detects the reflection phase shift in surface plasmon resonance regardless of the sample thickness and thus is applicable to ultrathin samples down to atomic-layer. As a demonstration example

monolayer

bilayer and multilayer ReS

samples have been used to verify the validity of the proposed method

and we find that the magnitude of in-plane optical anisotropy increases with the decrease of sample thickness. This work provides a precise determination method for in-plane optical anisotropy of thin film samples with various thickness and gives a guidance in finding new anisotropic low-dimensional materials and engineering new polarized nanodevices.

关键词

Keywords

references

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