Integrating Microsystems with Metamaterials Towards Metadevices

Abstract

Metamaterials, artificially engineered materials with extraordinary and controllable effective properties, have expedited the development of photonic and optical devices. The electric permittivity and magnetic permeability of metamaterials can be tailored efficiently by changing the structural design of metamaterials. Recent research has mainly focused on tunable, reconfigurable, and nonlinear metamaterials towards the development of metamaterial devices, namely metadevices. Microsystems, or microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), provide powerful platforms to control the effective properties of metamaterials and integrate various functions into metamaterials. In this paper, we present the fundamentals of metamaterials, integration schemes of MEMS and metamaterials, and outlooks for metamaterial enabled photonic devices.