Electromagnetic Metasurfaces Research Articles

Terahertz Meta-Mirror with Scalable Reflective Passband by Decoupling of Cascaded Metasurfaces

Electromagnetic metasurfaces have been playing exotic roles in the construction of ultracompact and versatile metadevices for wave–matter interactions. So far, multiple metasurfaces cascaded with intercouplings have been intensively investigated for extraordinary wavefront control and broadband spectral regulations. However, most cases face high structural complexity and little attention is paid to cascaded metasurfaces without interlayer couplings. In this paper, we demonstrate one type of terahertz Bragg mirror with ideally high reflectivity and ultra-broad bandwidth by simply resorting to decoupled metasurfaces. Cascaded metasurfaces with decoupled mode control prove practically straightforward for analytical design and easy to fabricate for engineering purpose in our scheme. Essentially, by flexibly tuning the decoupled metasurface mode, the middle Fabry–Perot mode that behaves like a defect mode inside the reflective passband can be eliminated for substantial band expanding. Fundamental analyses and rigorous calculations are performed to confirm the feasibility of our metasurface-based THz Bragg mirror with scalable bandgap. In comparison, our meta-mirror provides superior spectral performance of a larger bandgap and higher in-band reflectivity over that composed by ten layers of alternate dielectrics (Rogers 3003 and 3005). Finally, our analytical methodology and numerical results provide a promising way for the rapid design and fabrication of a Bragg mirror in the optical regime.

Innovative design to achieve a multi-band electromagnetic wave stealth.

Metamaterials have opened up a new field of electromagnetic wave stealth that can achieve cross-band electromagnetic wave stealth through high electromagnetic wave absorption and low infrared emission. However, traditional cross-band stealth metamaterials make covering the terahertz band challenging and have certain design flaws. This Letter introduces an innovative cross-band electromagnetic wave stealth metasurface design that can achieve cross-band stealth in the infrared, microwave, and THz bands. We use phase change materials and the gradient principle to achieve GHz and THz cross-band absorption. We also design surface height-covered low infrared emitting materials, which give them lower infrared emissivity. These functions give it enormous potential in military applications, and using phase change materials for cross-band absorption also provides new, to our knowledge, ideas for multifunctional stealth materials.

Dewdrop Metasurfaces and Dynamic Control Based on Condensation and Evaporation.

Dewdrops, the droplets of water naturally occurring on leaves and carapaces of insects, are a fascinating phenomenon in nature. Here, a man-made array of dewdrops with arbitrary shapes and arrangements, which can function as an electromagnetic metasurface, is demonstrated. The realization of the dewdrop array is enabled by a surface covered by a tailored pattern of hydrophilic and hydrophobic coatings, where tiny droplets of water can aggregate and form dewdrops on the former. Interestingly, this metasurface made of dewdrops can be modulated by the condensation and evaporation process. By increasing relative humidity and decreasing temperature, the dewdrop metasurface is gradually formed with increasing amounts of water. While the reverse operation can make it completely disappear. This idea is demonstrated through two examples with different functions of dynamically controllable microwave absorption and scattering. The work shows a principle to construct functional electromagnetic devices with dewdrops, as well as a mechanism of dynamic control based on condensation and evaporation, promising unprecedented applications.

A kirigami-based reconfigurable metasurface for selective electromagnetic transmission modulation

Tunable three-dimensional (3D) electromagnetic metasurfaces are essential for achieving selective modulation of polarized waves, but they usually require complex designs and the use of smart materials, posing great implementation challenges. Here, we propose a novel kirigami-based reconfigurable electromagnetic metasurface, which consists of a kirigami-based deformable thin polyimide substrate and periodically arranged copper split-ring resonators. By simple stretch, the two-dimensional (2D) planar metasurface can be uniformly transformed into a 3D state, enabling it to effectively and selectively modulate linearly and circularly polarized waves. Experimental and numerical results reveal the mechanical deformation and transmission characteristics of the metasurface under applied strains. It is shown that the metasurface exhibits good selective transmission tunability while the resonant frequency remains basically unchanged for both transverse electric and transverse magnetic polarized waves. Furthermore, the selective tuning mechanism and the influence of geometrical parameters are also illustrated by the equivalent circuit analysis.

Multitasking Integrated Metasurface for Electromagnetic Wave Modulation with Reflection, Transmission, and Absorption.

Accommodating multiple tasks within a tiny metasurface unit cell without them interfering with each other is a significant challenge. In this paper, an electromagnetic (EM) wave modulation metasurface capable of reflection, transmission, and absorption is proposed. This multitasking capability is achieved through a cleverly designed multi-layer structure comprising an EM Wave Shield Layer (ESL), a Polarization Modulation Layer (PML), and a Bottom Plate Layer (BPL). The functionality can be arbitrarily switched by embedding control materials within the structure. Depending on external excitation conditions, the proposed metasurface can realize reflection-type co-planar polarization to cross-polarization conversion, transmission-type electromagnetically induced transparency-like (EIT-like) modes, and broadband absorption. Notably, all tasks operate approximately within the same operating frequency band, and their performance can be regulated by the intensity of external excitation. Additionally, the operating principle of the metasurface is analyzed through impedance matching, an oscillator coupling model, and surface current distribution. This metasurface design offers a strategy for integrated devices with multiple functionalities.

Strain-Induced Electromagnetic Transmission Modulation via a Reconfigurable Kirigami Metasurface

Tunable three-dimensional (3D) electromagnetic (EM) metasurfaces are critical for dynamic modulation of EM responses but their construction and tuning mechanism are still complex. Here, we report a simple yet effective 3D reconfigurable EM metasurface, which was obtained from a planar kirigami polyimide substrate printed with periodically arranged copper split-ring resonator. Under mechanical stretch, the two-dimensional (2D) planar metasurface can be uniformly deformed into a 3D state, which is effective for tuning its EM transmission characteristic. By combining mechanics and EM simulations as well as experimental measurements, we revealed the deformation mode and active EM transmission modulation capability of the metasurface. It is shown that at the initial state, the planar kirigami metasurface exhibits ideal frequency selective transmission to transverse electric (TE) wave but allows for complete transmission for transverse magnetic (TM) wave. As the applied strain increases from 0% to 20%, the transmission was adjusted from −17.74[Formula: see text]dB to −9.74[Formula: see text]dB for TE wave but merely from 0[Formula: see text]dB to −3.25[Formula: see text]dB for TM wave. Meanwhile, the resonant frequency experienced a visible shift for both TE and TM waves. Finally, the equivalent circuit analysis and simulated surface current density were conducted to reveal the tuning mechanism of the proposed metasurface.

Harnessing the Missing Spectral Correlation for Metasurface Inverse Design.

A long-held tenet in computer science asserts that the training of deep learning is analogous to an alchemical furnace, and its "black box" signature brings forth inexplicability. For electromagnetic metasurfaces, the related intelligent applications also get stuck into such a dilemma. Although the past 5 years have witnessed a proliferation of deep learning-based works across complex photonic scenarios, they neglect the already existing but untapped physical laws. Here, the intrinsic correlation between the real and imaginary parts of the spectra are revealed using Kramers-Kronig relations, which is then mimicked by bidirectional information flow in neural network space. Such consideration harnesses the missing spectral connection to extract crucial features effectively. The bidirectional recurrent neural network is benchmarked in metasurface inverse design and compare it with a fully-connected neural network, unidirectional recurrent neural network, and attention-based transformer. Beyond the improved accuracy, the study examines the intermediate information products and physically explains why different network structures yield different performances. The work offers explicable perspectives to utilize physical information in the deep learning field and facilitates many data-intensive research endeavors.

Dynamic Inverse Design of Broadband Metasurfaces with Synthetical Neural Networks

AbstractFor over 35 years of research, the debate about the systematic compositionality of neural networks remains unchanged, arguing that existing artificial neural networks are inadequate cognitive models. Recent advancements in deep learning have significantly shaped the landscape of popular domains, however, the systematic combination of previously trained neural networks remains an open challenge. This study presents how to dynamically synthesize a neural network for the design of broadband electromagnetic metasurfaces. The underlying mechanism relies on an assembly network to adaptively integrate pre‐trained inherited networks in a transparent manner that corresponds to the metasurface assembly in physical space. This framework is poised to curtail data requirements and augment network flexibility, promising heightened practical utility in complex composition‐based tasks. Importantly, the intricate coupling effects between different metasurface segments are accurately captured. The approach for two broadband metasurface inverse design problems is exemplified, reaching accuracies of 96.7% and 95.5%. Along the way, the importance of suitably formatting the spectral data is highlighted to capture sharp spectral features. This study marks a significant leap forward in inheriting pre‐existing knowledge in neural‐network‐based inverse design, improving its adaptability for applications involving dynamically evolving tasks.

Inverse Design of Electromagnetic Metasurfaces Utilizing Infinite and Separate Latent Space Yielded by a Machine Learning-Based Generative Model

This study proposes an inverse design framework for metasurfaces based on a neural network capable of generating infinite and continuous latent representations to fully span the electromagnetic metasurfaces (EMMS) property space. The inverse design of EMMS inherently poses the one-to-many mapping problem, since one set of electromagnetic properties can be provided by many different shapes of scatterers. Previous studies have addressed this issue by introducing machine learning-based generative models and regularization strategies. However, most of these approaches require highly complex operating configurations or external modules for preprocessing datasets. In contrast, this study aimed to construct a more streamlined and end-to-end solver by building a network to process multimodal datasets and then incorporating a classification scheme into the network. The validity of the idea was confirmed by comparing the accuracy of the results predicted by the proposed approach and the outcomes simulated using PSSFSS.

A tunable terahertz metasurface with function of polarization conversion and circular dichroism

A tunable and multifunctional electromagnetic control metasurface is proposed. The metasurface comprises the graphene sheet and gold open ring, enabling multiband cross-polarization conversion (CPC) and line-to-circular polarization conversion (LTCPC). Simultaneously, it can achieve circular dichroism (CD) with amplitude of 0.99 at 2.28 THz, along with the capability for near-field imaging. The physical mechanism of operation is studied by analyzing surface current distribution and electric field. In addition, because the metasurface exhibits chiral characteristics, appropriate rotation can induce a phase gradient, facilitating a phase coverage of 0–360°. Based on the tunable phase gradient of metasurface, anomalous reflection and vortex beams can be realized.

Line-wave waveguide engineering using Hermitian and non-Hermitian metasurfaces

Line waves (LWs) refer to confined edge modes that propagate along the interface of dual electromagnetic metasurfaces while maintaining mirror reflection symmetries. Previous research has both theoretically and experimentally investigated these waves, revealing their presence in the microwave and terahertz frequency ranges. In addition, a comprehensive exploration has been conducted on the implementation of non-Hermitian LWs by establishing the parity-time symmetry. This study introduces a cutting-edge dual-band line-wave waveguide, enabling the realization of LWs within the terahertz and infrared spectrums. Our work is centered around analyzing the functionalities of existing applications of LWs within a specific field. In addition, a novel non-Hermitian platform is proposed. We address feasible practical implementations of non-Hermitian LWs by placing a graphene-based metasurface on an epsilon-near-zero material. This study delves into the advantages of the proposed framework compared to previously examined structures, involving both analytical and numerical examinations of how these waves propagate and the underlying physical mechanisms.

Optimization of printing precision and mechanical property for powder-based 3D printed magnesium phosphate cement using fly ash

Fly ash (FA) is employed to optimize the hydration process of powder-based (inkjet) 3D printed magnesium phosphate cement (MPC), aiming to enhance the printing precision and mechanical properties of powder-based 3D printed structures. This paper systematically evaluates the effects of FA on the printability, printing precision, and mechanical properties of printed MPC. In addition, SEM, XRD, and X-CT are used to analyze the hydration morphology, products, and pore structure of printed MPC, respectively. The test results reveal that the proper addition of FA can effectively optimize the penetration process between the binder and powder bed to improve the printing precision of powder-based 3D printed MPC with the minimum printing size error controlled within 1%, which also achieves the maximum compressive strength of 10.1 MPa at 28d under room environment curing. Due to the pozzolanic and micro-aggregate effects, FA can significantly improve the hydration degree and optimize the pore structure of printed MPC with the total porosity decreased by 24%. The high precision of the printed complicated electromagnetic metasurface models further demonstrates the applicability of powder-based 3D printing with FA-optimized MPC.

Research on the electromagnetic characteristics of metasurfaces based on air dielectric substrates

Electromagnetic metasurfaces can achieve effective control of electromagnetic waves and achieve effects such as blocking, enhancing, reflecting, transmitting, or deflecting electromagnetic waves, possessing electromagnetic properties that go beyond traditional materials. Existing research indicates that the dielectric substrate of metasurfaces has a significant impact on their electromagnetic properties. Increasing the substrate thickness will be beneficial for expanding the impedance bandwidth of the metasurface, and changes in dielectric constant will also have some impact on the operating frequency and bandwidth of the metasurface. A metasurface based on an air substrate was proposed through the research of dielectric materials. In addition, an ultrawideband, miniaturized, and high-gain metasurface antenna based on an air substrate is designed. The overall size of the designed antenna is 0.5λL × 0.5λL (where λL represents the wavelength at the lowest working frequency in free space). The measured results indicate that the proposed antenna exhibits a −10 dB impedance bandwidth of 74.3% (2.53–5.52 GHz) and a peak boresight gain of 10.1 dBi.

Low-RCS electromagnetic metasurface antenna based on shared-aperture technique

In this paper, a novel shared-aperture method of electromagnetic metasurface and antenna is proposed to obtain low radar-cross-section (RCS) performance. In this method, the low-RCS metasurface is first designed, then this metasurface is combined with traditional antenna to obtain novel low-RCS antenna based on shared-aperture technique. Besides, the analysis and corresponding local structure modification are also conducted to ensure that the antenna has good radiation performance while reducing broadband RCS. Using this method, a dual-layer polarization rotation unit cell is first proposed and its broadband working principle is investigated by both theoretical analysis and numerical comparison. Based on this unit cell, a broadband low-RCS metasurface is constructed. Then an initial shared-aperture metasurface antenna is obtained by substituting the middle cells in the metasurface with traditional patch antenna directly. Through careful analysis of surface current in radiation mode, the gain decrease of this metasurface antenna is revealed. On this basis, a finite removal strategy is put forward and some metasurface cells in the antenna are removed by using the electric current analysis. Consequently, an improved shared-aperture metasurface antenna is proposed. This improved antenna works in a frequency range from 6.3 to 7.48 GHz, which is slightly wider than the traditional patch antenna. Its gain is also higher than that of traditional antenna, with a maximum improvement of 1 dB. Meanwhile, the apparent RCS decreases from 6 to 16 GHz for any polarized incident wave, and the reduction peak is larger than 20 dB. Finally, fabrications and measurements are conducted. The measurement results and numerical calculations are in good agreement. The well-behaved radiation performance and broadband low-RCS property of this metasurface antenna verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Unlike most of reported design methods of low-RCS antennas directly from traditional antennas, the proposed method adopts reverse thinking to transform scattering optimization into radiation optimization, realizing the integration between metasurface and antenna, thus making low-RCS antenna design easier and faster.

Exploring the tuning mechanism of multipolar quasi-continuous domain bound states in tetramer metasurface

High-quality factor (high-<i>Q</i>) resonance has broad prospects in applications such as in narrow-band filtering, slow-light devices, and nonlinear optics interaction enhanced to highly sensitive sensing. Previous methods of designing high-<i>Q</i> resonance suffered intrinsic drawbacks such as high-volume cavities or large-scale bending radii. However, recently, a new approach to designing high-<i>Q</i> resonances has begun to attract public attention on the basis of asymmetric metasurfaces that are related to the bound states in the continuum (BIC) phenomenon. Constructing BIC resonance in electromagnetic metasurface can generate sharp resonant transmission peak. Therefore, there is growing interest in utilizing BIC to achieve metasurface with high-<i>Q</i>. However, most of existing studies are based on single BIC, and few studies focusing on multiband BICs and multiple forms of symmetry breaking. In this work, we propose an all-dielectric metasurface composed of tetrameric cuboids. By etching two elliptical cylinders in each cuboid, the metasurface can simultaneously support in-plane symmetry breaking, displacement perturbations and periodic perturbations. We first use multipole calculations to analyze the physical mechanism by which the metasurface generates quasi-BIC under these three conditions. It is confirmed that the <i>Q</i> factor and resonant peak position of quasi-BIC can be controlled by adjusting the asymmetry parameters. Subsequently, we introduce the in-plane symmetry breaking, displacement perturbations and periodic perturbations into the metasurface simultaneously and generate five quasi-BIC modes, whose numbers and positions can be flexibly adjusted, and the largest <i>Q</i> factor is 58039. In summary, this work provides a new practical design concept for realizing high-<i>Q</i> all-dielectric metasurfaces, which can be used to improve the sensitivity of multi-parameter sensors.

An Ultrathin Multiband Chiral Metasurface for Transmission and Asymmetric Absorption of Electromagnetic Waves

This article presents an ultrathin chiral metasurface which can exhibit multiband asymmetric absorption as well as symmetric transmission in a specific frequency band outside the absorption regions. Unlike most electromagnetic metasurface absorbers, the proposed structure does not have a continuous conducting sheet at the bottom which also allows it to act as a bandpass spatial filter. The metasurface has a substrate thickness of only λhigh/62.5 and λlow/34 at the highest and lowest operational free‐space wavelengths, respectively. The transmission band is centered at 5.5 GHz, and the asymmetric absorption bands are centered at 3, 3.33, and 4.5 GHz, respectively. The operational bands can be tuned as per user requirements. The metasurface has an angular stability of 45° for both TE and TM incidence. It can be used for radar cross‐section (RCS) reduction, electromagnetic shielding, and as a spatial bandpass filter.

Fourier metasurface cloaking: unidirectional cloaking of electrically large cylinder under oblique incidence.

The existence of a non-electrically-small scatterer adjacent to the source can severely distort the radiation and lead to a poor electromagnetic compatibility. In this work, we use a conducting hollow cylinder to shield a cylindrical scatterer. The cylinder is shelled with a single dielectric layer enclosed by an electromagnetic metasurface. The relationship between the scattering field and the surface impedance is derived analytically. By optimizing the Fourier expansion coefficients of the surface impedance distribution along ϕ-dimension, the scattering cross-section can be effectively reduced. This unidirectional cloaking method is valid for both TM/TE and non-TM/TE incident field and is not limited to a plane-wave incident field. The accuracy and effectiveness of the method are verified by four cloaking scenarios in microwave regime. We demonstrate that with the surface impedance obtained by the proposed method, a metasurface is designed with physical subwavelength structures. We also show a cloaking scenario under a magnetic dipole radiation, which is closer to the case of a realistic antenna. This method can be further applied to cloaking tasks in terahertz and optical regimes.

Soft Kirigami Composites for Form‐Finding of Fully Flexible Deployables

AbstractA new class of thin flexible structures is introduced that morph from flat into prescribed 3D shapes through strain mismatch between layers of a composite plate. To achieve control over the target shape, two different concepts are coupled. First, motivated by biological growth, strain mismatch is applied between the flat composite layers to transform it into a 3D shape. Depending on the amount of the applied strain mismatch, the transformation involves buckling into one of the available finite number of deformation modes. Second, inspired by kirigami, portions of the material are removed from one of the layers according to a specific pattern. This dramatically increases the number of possible 3D shapes and allows us to attain specific topologies. An experimental apparatus that allows precise control of the strain mismatch is devised. An inverse problem is posed, where starting from a given target shape, the physical parameters that make these shapes possible are determined. To show how the concept works, it focuses on circular composite plates and designs a kirigami pattern that yields a hemispherical structure. The analysis combines a theoretical approach with numerical simulations and physical experiments to understand and predict the shape transition from 2D to 3D. The tools developed here can be extended to attain arbitrary 3D shapes. The initially flat shape suggests that conventional additive manufacturing techniques can be used to functionalize the soft kirigami composite to fabricate, for example, deployable 3D structures, smart skins, and soft electromagnetic metasurfaces.

Electromagnetic heating-assisted metasurface for stably tunable, fast-responding chiroptics.

Herein, a graphene-dielectric metasurface with the function of stably tunable and fast responding on the chiroptics is theoretically investigated and numerically demonstrated. Via utilizing the intrinsic thermo-optical effect of the silicon, the circular dichroism (CD) peak position can be linearly scaled with a spectral sensitivity of up to 0.06 nm/K by artificially adjusting the temperature. Moreover, a perfectly adjusting manipulation with a wavelength shift of full width at half maximum for the resonant spectrum and the simultaneously maintained CD values can be realized by a slight temperature variation of ∼0.8 K. Additionally, we take a graphene layer as the heating source to actually demonstrate the ultra-fast thermal generation. Applying an input voltage of 2 V to the graphene with only 10 µs can rapidly increase the metasurface temperature of up to 550 K. Such performances hold the platform with wide applications in functional chiroptics and optoelectronics.

Chameleon-like intelligent camouflage metasurface

Humans have been long dreaming of obtaining the ability of changing electromagnetic (EM) attributes intelligently according to the environment so as to camouflage just as chameleons do. Thanks to the unprecedented high degree of freedom in manipulating EM waves, metasurfaces can mimic EM characteristics of various environments vividly and have pushed a giant step towards this long-desired dream. Nevertheless, for most metasurfaces, the EM characteristics are fixed and thus cannot be altered according to changing environments, which hinders their applications in intelligent scenarios such as moving target camouflage. With the aim to achieve intelligent camouflage, in this work we propose a chameleon-like framework for intelligent camouflage based on EM metasurface, which integrates transfer-learning-empowered perceptron into a reconfigurable metasurface. As a demonstrative example, a chameleon-like intelligent camouflage metasurface (CLICM) system with robust extendibility was developed and measured in laboratory. The system can dynamically control the reflection spectrum in 5.1–6.5 GHz according to what it sees. Both the simulation and experiment results verify this framework. This work provides a perceptron-algorithm-metasurface framework with robust extendibility for intelligent EM manipulation and may find wide applications in camouflage and wireless communication.