Metamaterials articles within Nature Materials

Featured

  • News & Views |

    The optical properties of self-assembled plasmonic nanoparticles can be reversibly tuned by using DNA strands.

    • Andrea Di Falco

  • Review Article |

    Metamaterials are artificially fabricated materials that allow for the control of light and acoustic waves in a manner that is not possible in nature. This Review covers the recent developments in the study of so-called metasurfaces, which offer the possibility of controlling light with ultrathin, planar optical components.

    • Nanfang Yu
    •  & Federico Capasso

  • Letter |

    Hard biological materials such as diatoms and sea sponges can inspire the design of structural materials that are mechanically robust yet lightweight. Hollow titanium nitride lattices have now been fabricated that mimic the length scales (from 10 nm to 100 μm) and hierarchy of biological materials. These lattices attain tensile strengths of 1.75 GPa without failing (even after multiple deformation cycles) because of the low probability of pre-existing flaws.

    • Dongchan Jang
    • , Lucas R. Meza
    •  & Julia R. Greer

  • Letter |

    Making colloidal nanoparticles with controlled composition and shape is challenging because at the nanoscale surface energy favours highly symmetric structures. Now, a fast, wafer-scale fabrication scheme that combines low-temperature shadow deposition with nanoscale patterning has been developed that produces anisotropic hybrid nanocolloids with designed composition and feature sizes down to 20 nm.

    • Andrew G. Mark
    • , John G. Gibbs
    •  & Peer Fischer

  • Letter |

    A suitably engineered plasmonic metamaterial featuring topologically protected sharp phase variations close to a zero-reflection point of incident lightwaves has now been demonstrated. Exploiting the high sensitivity of the abrupt phase changes, and by using reversible hydrogenation of graphene and binding of streptavidin–biotin, the detection of individual biomolecules and an areal mass sensitivity of the order of fg mm−2 is reported.

    • V. G. Kravets
    • , F. Schedin
    •  & A. N. Grigorenko

  • Article |

    Non-trivial topological phases can allow for one-way spin-polarized transport along the interfaces of topological insulators but they are relatively uncommon in the condensed state of matter. By arranging judiciously designed metamaterials into two-dimensional superlattices, a photonic topological insulator has now been demonstrated theoretically, enabling unidirectional spin-polarized photon propagation without the application of external magnetic fields or breaking of time-reversal symmetry.

    • Alexander B. Khanikaev
    • , S. Hossein Mousavi
    •  & Gennady Shvets

  • Letter |

    A critical component for chip-scale integrated photonics would be a non-reciprocal optical waveguide allowing light to travel in only one direction while reflecting it in the opposite one. Inspired by concepts of parity-time-symmetric quantum theories, a periodically modulated dielectric waveguide displaying unidirectional reflection is now demonstrated, reflecting light at telecom frequencies in only one direction.

    • Liang Feng
    • , Ye-Long Xu
    •  & Axel Scherer

  • Letter |

    Metamaterials offer a unique potential to guide the propagation of light. However, existing designs of devices such as invisibility cloaks require a restrictive range of materials parameters for their realization. A new approach to cloak devices now lifts such restrictions allowing for a greater flexibility in device design.

    • Nathan Landy
    •  & David R. Smith

  • Review Article |

    Metamaterials are man-made structures that allow optical properties to be shaped on length scales far smaller than the wavelength of light. Although metamaterials were initially considered mainly for static applications, this Review summarizes efforts towards an active functionality that enables a much broader range of photonic device applications.

    • Nikolay I. Zheludev
    •  & Yuri S. Kivshar

  • Letter |

    The properties of graphene have been widely studied for applications in electronics. Expanding its use in photonics as well, it is now demonstrated that the propagation of terahertz waves can be electronically switched by such a single atomic layer of carbon.

    • Seung Hoon Lee
    • , Muhan Choi
    •  & Bumki Min

  • News & Views |

    Proposed mechanical metamaterials that contract under tension and expand on compression represent a new approach to realize mechanical properties yet unknown in nature that could lead to applications in microelectromechanical systems.

    • Joseph N. Grima
    •  & Roberto Caruana-Gauci

  • Review Article |

    Metamaterials have a tremendous potential for applications from biophotonics to optical circuits, although progress has been hampered by intrinsic metal losses. This Review discusses the progress in countering such losses through the use of gain media to realize devices such as nanoplasmonic lasers or improved metamaterials for imaging and nonlinear optical applications.

    • O. Hess
    • , J. B. Pendry
    •  & K. L. Tsakmakidis

  • Letter |

    Electromagnetic waves propagating on the surface of materials are used in a variety of applications such as on-chip photonics. The demonstration now of a nearly 100% efficient coupling of these surface waves to freely propagating waves promises to improve photonic applications such as surface–plasmon couplers, antireflection coatings and many more.

    • Shulin Sun
    • , Qiong He
    •  & Lei Zhou

  • Article |

    Metamaterials have enabled many different photonic technologies. Now, the realization of holographic information storage promises new types of applications, in particular when combined with other metamaterials functionality.

    • Stéphane Larouche
    • , Yu-Ju Tsai
    •  & David R. Smith

  • Letter |

    Metamaterials are widely studied for their optical properties offering applications such as perfect lenses or cloaking. As is now shown, the interaction between the individual elements of metamaterials can also be used to design magnetoelastic metamaterials, which are able to change their structure in response to light.

    • Mikhail Lapine
    • , Ilya V. Shadrivov
    •  & Yuri S. Kivshar

  • Article |

    Plasmonic nanostructures are known to be an attractive platform for highly sensitive molecular sensors, although they often lack specificity. A plasmonic device with a sharp optical resonance tuned to biomolecules selectively captured on the surface of the device now offers a versatile yet highly specific platform for molecular sensing.

    • Chihhui Wu
    • , Alexander B. Khanikaev
    •  & Gennady Shvets

  • News & Views |

    A new design for elastic metamaterials that can behave either as liquids or solids over a limited frequency range may enable new applications based on the control of acoustic, elastic and seismic waves.

    • John Page

  • Article |

    Metamaterials show many intriguing properties, which are often limited to a narrow range of frequencies. The demonstration of a low-loss broadband metamaterial at radiofrequencies promises applications as enhanced antennas, for example.

    • Erik Lier
    • , Douglas H. Werner
    •  & Jeremy A. Bossard

  • Review Article |

    Transformation optics describes the capability to design the path of light waves almost at will through the use of metamaterials that control effective materials properties on a subwavelength scale. In this review, the physics and applications of transformation optics are discussed.

    • Huanyang Chen
    • , C. T. Chan
    •  & Ping Sheng

  • Letter |

    So far, the realization of negative-refractive-index materials has required the use of resonating metallic structures, leading to an inherently narrowband operation around those resonances. Here, negative-refractive-index materials are proposed that consist of single coaxial waveguide layers, with a negative refractive index at a broad range of visible wavelengths.

    • Stanley P. Burgos
    • , Rene de Waele
    •  & Harry A. Atwater

Browse broader subjects

Browse Metamaterials across other nature.com journals