In a single nanoscale device, surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) have potential to match the different length scales associated with photonics and electronics. In this Letter, we propose an accurate design of a plasmonic metasurface Luneburg lens (PMLL) accommodating SPPs. The simulations indicate that the full width at half-maximum is 0.42 μm, and the focus efficiency is 78%. The characters of a PMLL have robustness to manufacturing errors. The PMLL is applied in a 10 μm long compact coupler model, which couples the SPPs to the 40 nm wide output waveguide. The couple efficiency is higher than that of a conventional taper coupler in a broad bandwidth. The design is compatible with standard lithography technology.

High-resolution lens-coupled indirect X-ray scintillator imagers are required by many imaging applications. However, the severe weakening of image details prevents its further performance improvement. Through our research, this image degradation is attributed to the broadband loss of the high-spatial-frequency information caused by the high refractive index. A technique known as high-spatial-frequency spectrum enhanced reconstruction is thus proposed to retrieve this information. A two-dimensional high-density array is covered on the scintillator’s exit surface and operates as an encoder based on which high-frequency information can be shifted to the low-frequency region to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. The experimental results show that the middle-high-frequency signal intensities can be increased by an order of magnitude or more, up to ～50 times. Therefore, the image details can be effectively enhanced to break through the performance bottleneck of such widely used X-ray imagers for synchrotron radiation facilities or tabletop X-ray tubes.

Achromatic Talbot lithography (ATL) with high resolution has been demonstrated to be an excellent technique for large area periodic nano-fabrication. In this work, the uniformity of pattern distribution in ATL was studied in detail. Two ATL transmission masks with ～50% duty cycle in a square lattice were illuminated by a spatial coherent broadband extreme ultraviolet beam with a relative bandwidth of 2.38%. Nonuniform dot size distribution was observed by experiments and finite-difference time-domain simulations. The sum of the two kinds of diffraction patterns, with different lattice directions (45° rotated) and different intensity distributions, results in the final nonuniform pattern distribution.