skip to main content


Title: Functional Metamaterial Devices Enabled by Microsystems
Metamaterials represent a class of artificially engineered materials, which exhibit unprecedented properties enabled by their constituent subwavelength unit cells. The effective properties of metamaterials may be dynamically controlled by driving unit cells via different approaches, including photo-doping, electrical gating, or mechanical actuation. With such dynamical tuning mechanisms, the propagation modality of electromagnetic waves may be modulated to achieve functional devices for modulation, beam steering, focusing, and polarization control, among others. In addition, the perfect absorption and near field effect enabled by metamaterials may be used in electromagnetic detectors across the frequency spectrum. Microsystem technology provides a platform to achieve functional metamaterial devices by covering all requisite processes, including fabrication, packaging, and system integration. We report our progress in constructing functional devices by integrating metamaterials with microsystems technology and discuss remaining challenges and the future direction of metamaterial devices.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1810252
NSF-PAR ID:
10292015
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
2020 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM)
Page Range / eLocation ID:
26.2.1 to 26.2.4
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Abstract

    Electromagnetic metamaterials, which are a major type of artificially engineered materials, have boosted the development of optical and photonic devices due to their unprecedented and controllable effective properties, including electric permittivity and magnetic permeability. Metamaterials consist of arrays of subwavelength unit cells, which are also known as meta-atoms. Importantly, the effective properties of metamaterials are mainly determined by the geometry of the constituting subwavelength unit cells rather than their chemical composition, enabling versatile designs of their electromagnetic properties. Recent research has mainly focused on reconfigurable, tunable, and nonlinear metamaterials towards the development of metamaterial devices, namely, metadevices, via integrating actuation mechanisms and quantum materials with meta-atoms. Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), or microsystems, provide powerful platforms for the manipulation of the effective properties of metamaterials and the integration of abundant functions with metamaterials. In this review, we will introduce the fundamentals of metamaterials, approaches to integrate MEMS with metamaterials, functional metadevices from the synergy, and outlooks for metamaterial-enabled photonic devices.

     
    more » « less
  2. Abstract

    Geometrical‐frustration‐induced anisotropy and inhomogeneity are explored to achieve unique properties of metamaterials that set them apart from conventional materials. According to Neumann's principle, to achieve anisotropic responses, the material unit cell should possess less symmetry. Based on such guidelines, a triclinic metamaterial system of minimal symmetry is presented, which originates from a Trimorph origami pattern with a simple and insightful geometry: a basic unit cell with four tilted panels and four corresponding creases. The intrinsic geometry of the Trimorph origami, with its changing tilting angles, dictates a folding motion that varies the primitive vectors of the unit cell, couples the shear and normal strains of its extrinsic bulk, and leads to an unusual Poisson effect. Such an effect, associated with reversible auxeticity in the changing triclinic frame, is observed experimentally, and predicted theoretically by elegant mathematical formulae. The nonlinearities of the folding motions allow the unit cell to display three robust stable states, connected through snapping instabilities. When the tristable unit cells are tessellated, phenomena that resemble linear and point defects emerge as a result of geometric frustration. The frustration is reprogrammable into distinct stable and inhomogeneous states by arbitrarily selecting the location of a single or multiple point defects. The Trimorph origami demonstrates the possibility of creating origami metamaterials with symmetries that are hitherto nonexistent, leading to triclinic metamaterials with tunable anisotropy for potential applications such as wave propagation control and compliant microrobots.

     
    more » « less
  3. Abstract

    A major challenge for negative‐index acoustic metamaterials is increasing their operational frequency to the MHz range in water for applications such as biomedical ultrasound. Herein, a novel technology to realize acoustic metamaterials in water using microstructured silicon chips as unit cells that incorporate silicon nitride membranes and Helmholtz resonators with dimensions below 100 μm fabricated using clean‐room microfabrication technology is presented. The silicon chip unit‐cells are then assembled to form periodic structures that result in a negative‐index metamaterial. Finite‐element method (FEM) simulations of the metamaterial show a negative‐index branch in the dispersion relation in the 0.25–0.35 MHz range. The metamaterial is characterized experimentally using laser‐doppler vibrometry, showing opposite phase and group velocities, a signature of negative‐index materials, and is in close agreement with FEM simulations. The experimental measurements also show that the magnitude of phase and group velocities increase as the frequency increases within the negative‐index band, confirming the negative‐index behavior of the material. Acoustic indices from –1 to –5 are reached with respect to water in the 0.25–0.35 MHz range. The use of silicon technology microfabrication to produce acoustic metamaterials for operation in water opens a new road to reach frequencies relevant for biomedical ultrasound  applications.

     
    more » « less
  4. Abstract

    2D metamaterials have immense potential in acoustics, optics, and electromagnetic applications due to their unique properties and ability to conform to curved substrates. Active metamaterials have attracted significant research attention because of their on‐demand tunable properties and performances through shape reconfigurations. 2D active metamaterials often achieve active properties through internal structural deformations, which lead to changes in overall dimensions. This demands corresponding alterations of the conforming substrate, or the metamaterial fails to provide complete area coverage, which can be a significant limitation for their practical applications. To date, achieving area‐preserving active 2D metamaterials with distinct shape reconfigurations remains a prominent challenge. In this paper, magneto‐mechanical bilayer metamaterials are presented that demonstrate area density tunability with area‐preserving capability. The bilayer metamaterials consist of two arrays of magnetic soft materials with distinct magnetization distributions. Under a magnetic field, each layer behaves differently, which allows the metamaterial to reconfigure its shape into multiple modes and to significantly tune its area density without changing its overall dimensions. The area‐preserving multimodal shape reconfigurations are further exploited as active acoustic wave regulators to tune bandgaps and wave propagations. The bilayer approach thus provides a new concept for the design of area‐preserving active metamaterials for broader applications.

     
    more » « less
  5. null (Ed.)
    Acoustic/elastic metamaterials that rely on engineered microstructures instead of chemical composition enable a rich variety of extraordinary effective properties that are suited for various applications including vibration/noise isolation, high-resolution medical imaging, and energy harvesting and mitigation. However, the static nature of these elastic wave guides limits their potential for active elastic-wave guiding, as microstructure transformation remains a challenge to effectively apply in traditional elastic metamaterials due to the interplay of polarization and structural sensitivity. Here, a tunable, locally resonant structural waveguide is proposed and demonstrated for active vibration bandgap switching and elastic-wave manipulation between 1000–4000 Hz based on 3D printed building blocks of zinc-neutralized poly(ethylene- co -methacrylic acid) ionomer (Surlyn 9910). The ionomer exhibits shape memory behavior to enable rearrangement into new shape patterns through application of thermal stimuli that tunes mechanical performance in both space and time dimensions (4D metamaterial). The thermally induced shape-reorganization is programed to flip a series of frequency bands from passbands to bandgaps and vice versa . The continuously switched bandwidth can exceed 500 Hz. Consequently, altering the bandgap from “on” to “off” produces programmable elastic-wave propagation paths to achieve active wave guiding phenomena. An anisotropic cantilever-in-mass model is demonstrated to predict the self-adaptive dynamic responses of the printed structures with good agreement between the analytical work and experimental results. The tunable metamaterial-based waveguides illustrate the potential of 4D printed shape memory polymers in the designing and manufacturing of intelligent devices for elastic-wave control and vibration isolation. 
    more » « less