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Metamaterials are artificial materials which have widely attracted research attention due to their ability of delivering unique features, and are expected to be critical in the field of photonics as well as mechanics. By artificially creating subwavelength patterned structures, optical metamaterials allow to control and manipulate light; potential applications in which these types of structure can be paramount are metalenses and cloaking devices. By engineering micron to submicron structures, mechanical metamaterials instead exhibit exceptional responses to applied forces; these can be essential for example to create solids that have behave like liquids and ultralight, low-density materials with extraordinary strength.
This Collection showcases original manuscripts reporting the latest advances in metamaterials, looking at optical as well as mechanical metamaterials. It spans from metamaterial growth and characterisation technologies to their use in exciting applications from energy harvesting to medical imaging.