A research team led by Academician Tiejun Cui and Associate Professor Qian Ma from the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves at Southeast University has proposed a mechanically programmable diffractive neural network based on Pancharatnam-Berry (PB) phase metasurfaces. By mechanically controlling the rotation angles of the PB phase elements to precisely reconfigure the phase distribution, the network achieves flexible programmability tailored for various tasks, successfully combining the low power consumption of passive networks with the flexibility of programmable networks. This work was published inAdvanced Functional Materials on October 26, 2025, under the title "Mechanically Programmable Diffractive Neural Networks Based on Pancharatnam-Berry Phase," with Academician Tiejun Cui and Associate Professor Qian Ma as co-corresponding authors, and PhD student Yuming Ning and Associate Professor Qian Ma from the School of Information Science and Engineering as co-first authors.
