A review of metasurfaces: physics and applications

By Houtong Chen, A. Taylor, N. Yu. Reports on progress in physics. Physical Society, 2016

2,234 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Metamaterials are composed of periodic subwavelength metal/dielectric structures that resonantly couple to the electric and/or magnetic components of the incident electromagnetic fields, exhibiting properties that are not found in nature. This class of micro- and nano-structured artificial media have attracted great interest during the past 15 years and yielded ground-breaking electromagnetic and photonic phenomena. However, the high losses and strong dispersion associated with the resonant responses and the use of metallic structures, as well as the difficulty in fabricating the micro- and nanoscale 3D structures, have hindered practical applications of metamaterials. Planar metamaterials with subwavelength thickness, or metasurfaces, consisting of single-layer or few-layer stacks of planar structures, can be readily fabricated using lithography and nanoprinting methods, and the ultrathin thickness in the wave propagation direction can greatly suppress the undesirable losses. Metasurfaces enable a spatially varying optical response (e.g. scattering amplitude, phase, and polarization), mold optical wavefronts into shapes that can be designed at will, and facilitate the integration of functional materials to accomplish active control and greatly enhanced nonlinear response. This paper reviews recent progress in the physics of metasurfaces operating at wavelengths ranging from microwave to visible. We provide an overview of key metasurface concepts such as anomalous reflection and refraction, and introduce metasurfaces based on the Pancharatnam–Berry phase and Huygens’ metasurfaces, as well as their use in wavefront shaping and beam forming applications, followed by a discussion of polarization conversion in few-layer metasurfaces and their related properties. An overview of dielectric metasurfaces reveals their ability to realize unique functionalities coupled with Mie resonances and their low ohmic losses. We also describe metasurfaces for wave guidance and radiation control, as well as active and nonlinear metasurfaces. Finally, we conclude by providing our opinions of opportunities and challenges in this rapidly developing research field.

Subfields: Aerospace Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/36ac92c8967c4f9af50f51315550927c807361bd

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Citations in the corpus

The Road to 6G: Ten Physical Layer Challenges for Communications Engineers (2020, methodology): “While both challenges can be addressed using rather complex, multi-layer, reconfigurable unit cell architectures [5], engineering such unit cells to exhibit low form-factor, loss, cost, system complexity, and power consumption is a prerequisite in order for this technology to be a feasible option fo”
6G and Beyond: The Future of Wireless Communications Systems (2020, background): “CMOS transistors, PIN diodes, Micro-Electro-Mechanical Switches (MEMS), micro-ﬂuidic switches, magnetic and thermal switches are but a few of the considered options in the literature [66].”
Smart Radio Environments Empowered by Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces: How it Works, State of Research, and Road Ahead (2020, background): “can be found in the book [5], and in the recent survey papers [64] and [65].”
Intelligent Metasurfaces with Continuously Tunable Local Surface Impedance for Multiple Reconfigurable Functions (2018, background): “[2] H.”
Multi-Hop RIS-Empowered Terahertz Communications: A DRL-Based Hybrid Beamforming Design (2021, background): “, 2) ready integration into existing communication systems without the modifications on hardware, as well as 3) compact deployment of multiple RISs along the signal propagation path [3], [9], [21], [22], [27]–[38].”