Visible-Light-Transparent Digital Metasurface for High-Resolution Infrared Signature Reconstruction

Abstract

Infrared signatures encode information about the material properties and geometries of objects and have attracted attention in applications such as camouflage, anti-counterfeiting, marking, and information transmission. Existing approaches for infrared signature reconstruction suffer from limited fabrication area, spatial resolution, and grayscale levels, hindering the faithful reconstruction of large-area, information-rich, and complex infrared signatures. Here, we propose a visible-light-transparent infrared digital metasurface for high-resolution infrared signature reconstruction. By precisely controlling the laser-etched fraction within each pixel, the infrared emissivity can be independently tuned from 6.78% to 80.4% with a pixel size of 0.5 mm × 0.5 mm. An automated design workflow translates a target infrared image into the corresponding pixel-wise laser-patterning parameters for direct fabrication. When applied to different objects, the fabricated metasurfaces reproduce prescribed infrared signatures of personnel, vehicles, and natural environments, achieving a normalized cross-correlation coefficient of up to 0.95 between the reconstructed and target thermal images. Furthermore, a large-area metasurface with an overall size of 375 mm × 248 mm displays a 750 × 496-pixel infrared image with 24 grayscale levels, demonstrating the scalability and high-resolution imaging capability of the proposed strategy. This combination marks a transition from conventional infrared patterning to large-area, high-resolution infrared signature reconstruction. The work provides a simple and scalable route for the artificial reconstruction of complex infrared signatures and may advance applications in infrared camouflage, anti-counterfeiting labels, information display, and artistic imaging.

Keywords

Digital Metasurface / Infrared signature / Infrared camouflage / High-resolution

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The Author(s) 2026. This article is published by Higher Education Press.

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