Diode-like asymmetric transmission of circularly polarized waves

Optical diode plays an important role in optical computing and information processing. In this paper, a kind of three-layered chiral metamaterial is proposed to achieve diode-like asymmetric transmission for forward and backward propagations of circularly polarized electromagnetic waves only. The metamaterial is composed of a ring–chain structure sandwiched between two identical S-shaped metallic layers with their corresponding substrates. A transparent transmission at normal incidence in one direction and a small intensity of transmission in the opposite direction are numerically demonstrated in this chiral structure. Besides, the results reveal that the bandwidth of the cross-polarization transmission of this designed structure can be tuned by varying the incident angle of circularly polarized waves.