Metamaterials and Metasurfaces: A Review from the Perspectives of Materials, Mechanisms and Advanced Metadevices

Abstract

Throughout human history, the control of light, electricity and heat has evolved to become the cornerstone of various innovations and developments in electrical and electromagnetic technologies. Wireless communications, laser and computer technologies have all been achieved by altering the way light and other energy forms act naturally and how to manage them in a controlled manner. At the nanoscale, to control light and heat, matured nanostructure fabrication techniques have been developed in the last two decades, and a wide range of groundbreaking processes have been achieved. Photonic crystals, nanolithography, plasmonics phenomena and nanoparticle manipulation are the main areas where these techniques have been applied successfully and led to an emergent material sciences branch known as metamaterials. Metamaterials and functional material development strategies are focused on the structures of the matter itself, which has led to unconventional and unique electromagnetic properties through the manipulation of light—and in a more general picture the electromagnetic waves—in widespread manner. Metamaterial’s nanostructures have precise shape, geometry, size, direction and arrangement. Such configurations are impacting the electromagnetic light waves to generate novel properties that are difficult or even impossible to obtain with natural materials. This review discusses these metamaterials and metasurfaces from the perspectives of materials, mechanisms and advanced metadevices in depth, with the aim to serve as a solid reference for future works in this exciting and rapidly emerging topic.

Engineering by Cuts: How Kirigami Principle Enables Unique Mechanical Properties and Functionalities

“…They are typically assemblies of smaller‐scale units with purposefully designed geometry. By exploiting the correlations between geometry and mechanical properties, metamaterial and metastructures can achieve unorthodox properties unseen in traditional systems, [ 119 ] such as extremely high strength‐weight ratio, [ 120 ] wave propagation manipulation, [ 121 ] and negative constitutive properties (e.g., negative Poisson's ratio, [ 122 ] negative stiffness, [ 123 ] negative thermal expansion coefficient [ 124 ] ).…”

Pattern Reconfigurable Antennas at Millimeter-Wave Frequencies: A Comprehensive Survey

“…This gives multiple extra degrees of freedom, since geometrical parameters are easier to tune than chemical ones. Hence, metamaterials offer fullness of novel options for the design of almost any kind of RF device [59]. Metamaterials have been already used for antenna design at microwave and mm-Wave frequencies [60].…”

Searching guidelines for scalable and controllable design of multifunctional materials and hybrid interfaces: Status and perspective

“…A new concept of designing artificial materials involves making tunable devices based on phase-changed metasurfaces using different sub-wavelength-sized resonators (Ali et al, 2022). This makes it possible to manipulate the polarized states of electromagnetic waves in real time via broadband crosspolarization converters (including microwave and THz frequencies).…”