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The left hand of brightness: past, present and future of negative index materials

Nature Materials volume 5, pages 759–762 (2006)Cite this article

Recent advances have brought negative index materials and their fascinating properties from their theoretical origins into the domain of experimental physics and device engineering.

Pendry's proposal for the 'superlens' generated some initial controversy that was soon resolved by David Smith and colleagues3 with the first fabrication of a material with a negative refractive index and the demonstration of negative refraction. The race for the optical NIMs was on, and virtually every year saw a decrease of the operating wavelength where a negative index was observed — from centimetres in 2000 to infrared wavelengths in 2005 (refs 4–6). At longer wavelengths, NIMs have already found applications in reflectors and radio-antennas7 as well as in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)8.

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Figure 1: The history of negative refraction.
Figure 2: Different forms of negative refraction.
Figure 3: Different designs of metamaterials at optical frequencies.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge support by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, grants 06-02-16830-a and 04-02-16460-a (V.G.V.), as well as by the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials (PRISM) and the National Science Foundation, grants DMR-0134736 and ECS-0400615 (E.E.N.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, 141700 Dolgoprudny, Moscow Region, Russia

    V. G. Veselago

  2. Electrical Engineering Department, Princeton University, Princeton, 08544, New Jersey, USA

    E. E. Narimanov

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  1. V. G. Veselago
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  2. E. E. Narimanov
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Veselago, V., Narimanov, E. The left hand of brightness: past, present and future of negative index materials. Nature Mater 5, 759–762 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1746

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