Morphogenetic metasurfaces: unlocking the potential of Turing patterns

Abstract

The reaction-diffusion principle imagined by Alan Turing in an attempt to explain the structuring of living organisms is leveraged in this work for the procedural synthesis of radiating metasurfaces. The adaptation of this morphogenesis technique ensures the growth of anisotropic cellular patterns automatically arranged to satisfy local electromagnetic constraints, facilitating the radiation of waves controlled in frequency, space, and polarization. Experimental validations of this method are presented, designing morphogenetic metasurfaces radiating far-field circularly polarized beams and generating a polarization-multiplexed hologram in the radiative near-field zone. The exploitation of morphogenesis-inspired models proves particularly well suited for solving generative design problems, converting global physical constraints into local interactions of simulated chemical reactants ensuring the emergence of self-organizing meta-atoms.

Synergy between AI and Optical Metasurfaces: A Critical Overview of Recent Advances

“…Among the examples are biological morphological structures based on Turing patterns utilizing the reaction-diffusion principle, as described in his seminal paper "The chemical basis of morphogenesis" [371]. Such structures, which are widespread throughout the living world, have been used to produce optical metasurfaces [372] and other nanopatterned functional photonic structures [373].…”