Information Metamaterials

Information metamaterials build a bridge between the physical world and digital world, putting metamaterials into real world applications.

Tie Jun Cui (Author), Shuo Liu (Author)

9781108958011, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 18 February 2021

75 pages
15 x 23 x 0.8 cm, 0.21 kg

Metamaterials have attracted enormous interests from both physics and engineering communities in the past 20 years, owing to their powerful ability in manipulating electromagnetic waves. However, the functionalities of traditional metamaterials are fixed at the time of fabrication. To control the EM waves dynamically, active components are introduced to the meta-atoms, yielding active metamaterials. Recently, a special kind of active metamaterials, digital coding and programmable metamaterials, are proposed, which can achieve dynamically controllable functionalities using field programmable gate array (FPGA). Most importantly, the digital coding representations of metamaterials set up a bridge between the digital world and physical world, and allow metamaterials to process digital information directly, leading to information metamaterials. In this Element, we review the evolution of information metamaterials, mainly focusing on their basic concepts, design principles, fabrication techniques, experimental measurement and potential applications. Future developments of information metamaterials are also envisioned.

1. Introduction
2. Digital Coding Metamaterials
3. Anisotropic Digital Coding Metamaterials
4. Programmable Metamaterials 5. Information Processing on Digital Coding Metamaterials
6. New Imaging Systems Based on Programmable Metasurfaces
7. Time-Domain Digital Coding and New-Architecture Wireless Communication System
8. Summary and Outlook.

Subject Areas: Microwave technology [TJFN], Electronics & communications engineering [TJ], Materials science [TGM], Physics [PH], Science: general issues [PD], Mathematics [PB]