Controllable Wrinkling Inspired Multifunctional Metamaterial for Near-Field and Holographic Displays

Abstract

Tunable electromagnetic (EM) metamaterials have received significant attention due to their compelling advantages of integration and minimization compared with conventional bulky devices. Meanwhile, mechanically reconfigurable metamaterials have witnessed a striving period over recent years due to their simplified structural composition and confined modulation capabilities. Here, a controllable-wrinkling-based reconfiguration method is proposed to design split-ring resonant units with dynamic transmittance spectra by switching between planar and wrinkling morphologies. For the linear polarized incidence, the geometries of planar and wrinkled units are optimized to achieve on-demanded manipulation of the phases and amplitudes, respectively. By simultaneously implementing the amplitude design and the phase gradient, the mechanically inspired metamaterial is engineered to display a near-field and a holographic image. For circularly polarized incidences, the spin-decoupled phases and chiral effects demonstrated in the planar and wrinkled state assist in designing a metamaterial to possess spin-multiplexed and strain-modulated fourfold displays. These results demonstrate the practical feasibility of the wrinkling method in engineering tunable metamaterials, and the design flexibility, as well as the mechanical strategy, can extend the potential toward the application scenarios such as information processing, sensing, imaging, flexible meta-devices, etc.