Broadband Surface Waves Couplers With Adjustable Excitation Modes and Controllable Wavefront Directions Utilizing Integrated Pancharatnam–Berry Phase Gradient Metasurfaces

Surface waves (SWs) can be coupled by phase gradient metasurfaces (PGMs) with high efficiency, but this methodology still suffers from inherent defects of narrow bandwidth, changeless coupled mode, difficult separation of hybrid modes SWs, and uncontrollable propagation direction. In this article, a series of innovative designs is proposed by combining different Pancharatnam–Berry (PB) PGMs with appointed phase distribution principles to resolve PGMs SWs couplers’ above problems. Both the simulated and measured results verify that the broadband conventional SWs coupler can couple transverse magnetic (TM) mode SWs under
$x$
-polarized incidence and the broadband extraordinary SWs coupler can couple TM mode SWs under
$y$
-polarized incidence in 8.5–11.5 GHz. By integrating these two SWs couplers, a bifunctional SWs coupler is obtained to couple TM mode SWs to the left and transverse electric (TE) mode SWs to the right simultaneously under
$x$
-polarized incidence. Furthermore, another two SWs couplers are designed to excite TM mode SWs with 30° and 45° slant directions under
$x$
-polarized incidence in 8.5–11.5 GHz, which indicates that coupled SWs’ wavefront direction can be controlled flexibly in a wide bandwidth. The above SWs couplers are proved to work with relatively high coupling efficiencies and have great potential in engineering applications.