Leveraging of MEMS Technologies for Optical Metamaterials Applications

Abstract

Tunable metamaterial devices have experienced explosive growth in the past decades, driving the traditional electromagnetic (EM) devices to evolve into diversified functionalities by manipulating EM properties such as amplitude, frequency, phase, polarization, and propagation direction. However, one of the bottlenecks of these rapidly developed metamaterials technologies is limited tunability caused by the intrinsic frequency‐dependent property of exotic tunable material. To overcome such limitation, the microelectromechanical system (MEMS) enabling micro/nanoscale manipulation is developed to actively control “meta‐atom” in terahertz and infrared region, which brings frequency‐scalable tunability and complementary metal‐oxide‐semiconductor‐compatible functional meta‐devices. Beyond tunability, novel chemical sensing platforms of molecular identification and dynamic monitoring of the biochemical process can be achieved by integrating micro/nanofluidics channels with metamaterial resonators. Additionally, incorporating metamaterial absorbers with MEMS resonators brings another research interest in MEMS zero‐power devices and radiation sensors. Furthermore, moving from 2D metasurfaces to 3D metamaterials, enhanced EM properties like novel resonance mode, giant chirality, and 3D manipulation reinforce the application in biochemical and physical sensors as well as functional meta‐devices, paving the way to realize multi‐functional sensing and signal processing on a hybrid smart‐sensor microsystem for booming healthcare, environmental monitoring, and the Internet of Things applications.

Progress of infrared guided-wave nanophotonic sensors and devices

“…9g (iii), it is evident that the thin PMMA detection in a small footprint on waveguide is only made feasible with the aid of nanoplasmonics. The tunability of nanoplasmonics can be achieved by incorporating microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology [192]. In the terahertz regime, reconfiguration of individual pixels in the nanoplasmonic metamaterial has been demonstrated ( Fig.…”

Stretchable and High‐Adhesive Plasmonic Metasheet Using Al Subwavelength Grating Embedded in an Elastomer Nanosheet

“…Grating period controlled by elastic deformation of a bulk elastomer substrate has been the subject of many reports, [14][15][16][17][18][19][20] mainly using films that were too thick to integrate into active devices such as microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). [35,36] An elastomer-based DCT device is expected to have a wide tunable range compared to conventional tunable MEMS metamaterials composed only of hard materials. In addition, an ultra-thin elastomeric metasurface can be easily integrated to the arrayed plane MEMS by attaching them.…”

Metasurface Color Filters Using Aluminum and Lithium Niobate Configurations

“…Recently, the research progresses of metamaterials have advanced toward the realization of tunable metasurfaces that enables real-time control over their geometrical and optical properties, thus creating exceptional opportunities in the field of actively tunable metamaterials. They have been reported to span the visible [1][2][3][4][5][6], infrared (IR) [7][8][9][10][11][12], and terahertz (THz) [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] spectral ranges. As the unique optical properties in metasurfaces rely on the interaction between incident light and the nanostructure, desirable properties can be achieved by properly tailoring the shape, size, and composition of structure.…”