Two-dimensional polarization beam splitter based on cylindrical nano grating

•A novel two-dimensional PBS based on a cylindrical array grating is proposed and fabricated for the first time.•Under normal incidence at 780nm, most of the energy of TE polarization light is divided equally at the diffraction orders of (0, ±1), while TM polarization light is at the diffraction orders of (±1, 0), which opens up a new direction for the development of polarization beam splitting.•The effective diffraction efficiency of the simulated optimal solution of the grating is 92.08%.•With excellent polarization selectivity in free space, the 2D-PBS has considerable application potential for polarization multiplexing, optical communication, and polarization dependent grating interferometer.