Metamaterial

A metamaterial (from the Greek word μετά meta, meaning 'beyond' and the Latin word materia, meaning 'matter' or 'material') is a material engineered to have a property that is not found in naturally occurring materials. They are made from assemblies of multiple elements fashioned from composite materials such as metals and plastics. The materials are usually arranged in repeating patterns, at scales that are smaller than the wavelengths of the phenomena they influence. Metamaterials derive their properties not from the properties of the base materials, but from their newly designed structures. Their precise shape, geometry, size, orientation and arrangement gives them their smart properties capable of manipulating electromagnetic waves: by blocking, absorbing, enhancing, or bending waves, to achieve benefits that go beyond what is possible with conventional materials. A metamaterial (from the Greek word μετά meta, meaning 'beyond' and the Latin word materia, meaning 'matter' or 'material') is a material engineered to have a property that is not found in naturally occurring materials. They are made from assemblies of multiple elements fashioned from composite materials such as metals and plastics. The materials are usually arranged in repeating patterns, at scales that are smaller than the wavelengths of the phenomena they influence. Metamaterials derive their properties not from the properties of the base materials, but from their newly designed structures. Their precise shape, geometry, size, orientation and arrangement gives them their smart properties capable of manipulating electromagnetic waves: by blocking, absorbing, enhancing, or bending waves, to achieve benefits that go beyond what is possible with conventional materials. Appropriately designed metamaterials can affect waves of electromagnetic radiation or sound in a manner not observed in bulk materials. Those that exhibit a negative index of refraction for particular wavelengths have attracted significant research. These materials are known as negative-index metamaterials. Potential applications of metamaterials are diverse and include optical filters, medical devices, remote aerospace applications, sensor detection and infrastructure monitoring, smart solar power management, crowd control, radomes, high-frequency battlefield communication and lenses for high-gain antennas, improving ultrasonic sensors, and even shielding structures from earthquakes. Metamaterials offer the potential to create superlenses. Such a lens could allow imaging below the diffraction limit that is the minimum resolution that can be achieved by conventional glass lenses. A form of 'invisibility' was demonstrated using gradient-index materials. Acoustic and seismic metamaterials are also research areas. Metamaterial research is interdisciplinary and involves such fields as electrical engineering, electromagnetics, classical optics, solid state physics, microwave and antenna engineering, optoelectronics, material sciences, nanoscience and semiconductor engineering. Explorations of artificial materials for manipulating electromagnetic waves began at the end of the 19th century. Some of the earliest structures that may be considered metamaterials were studied by Jagadish Chandra Bose, who in 1898 researched substances with chiral properties. Karl Ferdinand Lindman studied wave interaction with metallic helices as artificial chiral media in the early twentieth century. Winston E. Kock developed materials that had similar characteristics to metamaterials in the late 1940s. In the 1950s and 1960s, artificial dielectrics were studied for lightweight microwave antennas. Microwave radar absorbers were researched in the 1980s and 1990s as applications for artificial chiral media. Negative-index materials were first described theoretically by Victor Veselago in 1967. He proved that such materials could transmit light. He showed that the phase velocity could be made anti-parallel to the direction of Poynting vector. This is contrary to wave propagation in naturally occurring materials. John Pendry was the first to identify a practical way to make a left-handed metamaterial, a material in which the right-hand rule is not followed. Such a material allows an electromagnetic wave to convey energy (have a group velocity) against its phase velocity. Pendry's idea was that metallic wires aligned along the direction of a wave could provide negative permittivity (dielectric function ε < 0). Natural materials (such as ferroelectrics) display negative permittivity; the challenge was achieving negative permeability (µ < 0). In 1999 Pendry demonstrated that a split ring (C shape) with its axis placed along the direction of wave propagation could do so. In the same paper, he showed that a periodic array of wires and rings could give rise to a negative refractive index. Pendry also proposed a related negative-permeability design, the Swiss roll. In 2000, Smith et al. reported the experimental demonstration of functioning electromagnetic metamaterials by horizontally stacking, periodically, split-ring resonators and thin wire structures. A method was provided in 2002 to realize negative-index metamaterials using artificial lumped-element loaded transmission lines in microstrip technology. In 2003, complex (both real and imaginary parts of) negative refractive index and imaging by flat lens using left handed metamaterials were demonstrated. By 2007, experiments that involved negative refractive index had been conducted by many groups. At microwave frequencies, the first, imperfect invisibility cloak was realized in 2006.