Chiral Kirigami for Bend-Tolerant Real-Time Reconfigurable Holograms

Abstract Despite the commonality of static holograms, the holography with multiple information layers and reconfigurable grey-scale images at communication frequencies remain a confluence of scientific challenges1-4. One well-known difficulty is the simultaneous modulation of phase and amplitude of electromagnetic wavefronts with a high modulation depth5,6. A less appreciated challenge is scrambling of the information and images with hologram bending7,8. Here, we show that chirality-guided pixelation of plasmonic kirigami sheets enables tunable multiplexed holography at terahertz frequencies needed for 6G communications. The convex and concave structures with slanted Au strips exhibit gradual variations in local chirality facilitating modulation of light ellipticity reaching 40 deg. Real-time switching between three-dimensional images of the letter “M” and the Mona Lisa demonstrate the possibility of complex grey-scale information content. Unexpectedly, the microscale chirality of each pixel experiences little change with bending while retaining controllable reconfigurability upon stretching. The remarkable resilience of chiral holograms to bending and the simplicity of their design with local chirality measures open the door to information technologies with fault-tolerant THz encryption and wearable holographic devices.