Metamaterial

A metamaterial (from the Greek word μετά meta, meaning "beyond" or "after", and the Latin word materia, meaning "matter" or "material") is a type of material engineered to have a property, typically rarely observed in naturally occurring materials, that is derived not from the properties of the base materials but from their newly designed structures. Metamaterials are usually fashioned from multiple materials, such as metals and plastics, and are usually arranged in repeating patterns, at scales that are smaller than the wavelengths of the phenomena they influence. Their precise shape, geometry, size, orientation, and arrangement give them their "smart" properties of manipulating electromagnetic, acoustic, or even seismic waves: by blocking, absorbing, enhancing, or bending waves, to achieve benefits that go beyond what is possible with conventional materials.

Appropriately designed metamaterials can affect waves of electromagnetic radiation or sound in a manner not observed in bulk materials. Those that exhibit a negative index of refraction for particular wavelengths have been the focus of a large amount of research. These materials are known as negative-index metamaterials.

Potential applications of metamaterials are diverse and include sports equipment, optical filters, medical devices, remote aerospace applications, sensor detection and infrastructure monitoring, smart solar power management, lasers, crowd control, radomes, high-frequency battlefield communication and lenses for high-gain antennas, improving ultrasonic sensors, and even shielding structures from earthquakes. Metamaterials offer the potential to create super-lenses. Such a lens can allow imaging below the diffraction limit that is the minimum resolution d=λ/(2NA) that can be achieved by conventional lenses having a numerical aperture NA and with illumination wavelength λ. Sub-wavelength optical metamaterials, when integrated with optical recording media, can be used to achieve optical data density higher than limited by diffraction. A form of 'invisibility' was demonstrated using gradient-index materials. Acoustic and seismic metamaterials are also research areas.

Metamaterial research is interdisciplinary and involves such fields as electrical engineering, electromagnetics, classical optics, solid state physics, microwave and antenna engineering, optoelectronics, material sciences, nanoscience and semiconductor engineering. Recent developments also show promise for metamaterials in optical computing, with metamaterial-based systems theoretically being able to perform certain tasks more efficiently than conventional computing.