Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “METAMATERIALS”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 91 records · Page 5
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2017

Parametric interaction of optical waves in metamaterials under low-frequency pumping

The influence of phase effects under three-wave parametric interaction and low-frequency pumping in metamaterials is studied in the case of a negative refractive index at a signal-wave frequency. It is found that the efficiency of the backward signal-wave amplification is the higher, the greater the ratio of the intensities of the idler and signal waves at the input to the metamaterial. An increase in the idler wave intensity at the input by five times, as compared to the signal-wave intensity, leads to a nonlinear increase in the signal-wave amplification by almost 20 times. According to the analytic expressions obtained in the constant-intensity approximation, the choice of the optimal parameters for the pump intensity, total length of the metamaterial and phase detuning will facilitate the implementation of regimes of effective amplification and generation of the signal wave. A comparison is made with the results obtained in the constant-field approximation, and a numerical estimate of the expected efficiency of the frequency conversion is presented. Control of frequency and pump power is shown to make possible the smooth tuning of the parametric converter frequency. The developed method can be used to design frequency converters based on nonlinear metamaterials.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2020

Multiple Tunable Hyperbolic Resonances in Broadband Infrared Carbon-Nanotube Metamaterials

Aligned densely packed carbon-nanotube metamaterials prepared using vacuum filtration are an emerging infrared nanophotonic material. We report multiple hyperbolic plasmon resonances, together spanning the mid-infrared, in individual resonators made from aligned and densely packed carbon nanotubes. In a near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) imaging study of nanotube metamaterial resonators, we observe distinct deeply subwavelength field profiles at the fundamental and higher-order resonant frequencies. The wafer-scale area of the nanotube metamaterials allows us to combine this near-field imaging with a systematic far-field spectroscopic study of the scaling properties of many resonator arrays. Thorough theoretical modeling agrees with these measurements and identifies the resonances as higher-order Fabry-Perot (FP) resonances of hyperbolic waveguide modes. Nanotube resonator arrays show broadband extinction from 1.5–10 µm and reversibly switchable extinction in the 3–5 µm atmospheric transparency window through the coexistence of multiple modes in individual ribbons. Broadband carbon-nanotube metamaterials supporting multiple resonant modes are a promising candidate for ultracompact absorbers, tunable thermal emitters, and broadband sensors in the mid-infrared.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

Experimental Verification of Pulse Shaping in Elastic Metamaterials Under Impact Excitation

Here, we present experimental verification of pulse shaping in elastic metamaterials together with a procedure to design, fabricate, and verify metamaterial pulse shapers under impact excitation. The split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) test, a fundamental dynamic test introduced more than 70 years ago, often incorporates pulse shaping as a means to alter a stress wave, providing the primary motivation for the presented study. Elastic metamaterials hold promise for enhancing conventional pulse shaping abilities and improving capabilities of the SHPB test. We first design the pulse shaper by numerically optimizing its response using finite element analysis. The pulse shaper consists of repeated unit cells based on a combination of a phononic crystal and a local resonator. Then, we fabricate and test pulse shaper candidates to validate the procedural efficacy. An iterative element corrects inaccuracies in input force and material properties and allows convergence on an appropriate pulse shaper. We carry out this procedure by designing pulse shapers fabricated from 3D-printed polylactic acid (PLA) to achieve an extended dwell acceleration pulse shape. In experimental impact tests, the procedure results in rise, dwell, and fall behaviors comparable to that predicted, effectively confirming the efficacy of the presented procedure and verifying the performance of metamaterial-based pulse shapers.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2014

Mechanism of the metallic metamaterials coupled to the gain material

In this study, we present evidence of strong coupling between the gain material and the metallic metamaterials. It is of vital importance to understand the mechanism of the coupling of metamaterials with the gain medium. Using a four-level gain system, the numerical pump-probe experiments are performed in several configurations (split–ring resonators (SRRs), inverse SRRs and fishnets) of metamaterials, demonstrating reduction of the resonator damping in all cases and hence the possibility for loss compensation. We find that the differential transmittance ΔT/T can be negative in different SRR configurations, such as SRRs on the top of the gain substrate, gain in the SRR gap and gain covering the SRR structure, while in the fishnet metamaterial with gain ΔT/T is positive.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Roadmap on thermodynamics and thermal metamaterials

Thermal metamaterials represent a transformative paradigm in modern physics, synergizing thermodynamic principles with metamaterial engineering to master heat flow at will. As next-generation technologies demand multi-scale thermal control, this field urgently requires systematic frameworks to unify its multidisciplinary advances. Curated through a global collaboration involving over 50 specialists across 25 subdisciplines, this review primarily summarizes two decades of advancements, ranging from theoretical breakthroughs to functional implementations. The review reveals groundbreaking innovations in heat manipulation through the exploration of both classical and non-classical transport regimes, topological thermal control mechanisms, and quantum-informed phonon engineering strategies. By bridging physical insights like non-Hermitian thermal dynamics and valleytronic phonon transport with cutting-edge applications, we demonstrate paradigm-shifting capabilities: environment-adaptive thermal cloaks, AI-optimized metamaterials, and nonlinear thermal circuits enabling heat-based computation. Experimental milestones include 3D thermal null media with reconfigurable invisibility and thermal designs breaking classical conductivity limits. Here, this collaborative effort establishes an indispensable roadmap for physicists, highlighting pathways to quantum thermal management, entropy-controlled energy systems, and topological devices. As thermal metamaterials transition from laboratory marvels to technological cornerstones, this work provides the foundational lexicon and design principles for the coming era of intelligent thermal matter.

heat conduction control↗
DOE OSTI2024

Void-Engineered Metamaterial Delay Line with Built-In Impedance Matching for Ultrasonic Applications

Metamaterials exhibit unique ultrasonic properties that are not always achievable with traditional materials. However, the structures and geometries needed to achieve such properties are often complex and difficult to obtain using common fabrication techniques. In the present research work, we report a novel metamaterial acoustic delay line with built-in impedance matching that is fabricated using a common 3D printer. Delay lines are commonly used in ultrasonic inspection when signals need to be separated in time for improved sensitivity. However, if the impedance of the delay line is not perfectly matched with those of both the sensor and the target medium, a strong standing wave develops in the delay line, leading to a lower energy transmission. The presented metamaterial delay line was designed to match the acoustic impedance at both the sensor and target medium interfaces. This was achieved by introducing graded engineered voids with different densities at both ends of the delay line. The measured impedances of the designed metamaterial samples show a good match with the theoretical predictions. The experimental test results with concrete samples show that the acoustic energy transmission is increased by 120% and the standing wave in the delay line is reduced by over a factor of 2 compared to a commercial delay line.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2019

Tunable Superconducting Josephson Dielectric Metamaterial

We demonstrate a low-dissipation dielectric metamaterial with tunable properties based on the Josephson effect. Superconducting wires loaded with regularly spaced Josephson junctions (critical current $I_c \approx 0.25$ $\mu$A) spanning a K-band waveguide and aligned with the microwave electric fields create a superconducting dielectric metamaterial. Applied dc current tunes the cutoff frequency and effective permittivity of this unique electric metamaterial. The results are in agreement with an analytical model for microwave transmission through the artificial dielectric medium.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2018

Self-Assembled Ag–TiN Hybrid Plasmonic Metamaterial: Tailorable Tilted Nanopillar and Optical Properties

Key challenges limiting the adoption of metallic plasmonic nanostructures for practical devices include structural stability and the ease of large-scale fabrication. Overcoming these issues may require novel metamaterial fabrication with potentials for improved durability under extreme conditions. Here, in this paper, a self-assembled growth of a hybrid plasmonic metamaterial in thin-film form is reported, with epitaxial Ag nanopillars embedded in TiN, a mechanically strong and chemically inert matrix. One of the key achievements lies in the successful control of the tilt angle of the Ag nanopillars (from 0° to 50°), which is attributed to the interplay between the growth kinetics and thermodynamics during deposition. Such an anisotropic nature offered by the tilted Ag nanopillars in TiN matrix is crucial for achieving broadband, asymmetric optical selectivity. Optical spectra coupled with numerical simulations demonstrate strong plasmonic resonance, as well as angular selectivity in a broad UV–vis to near-infrared regime. The nanostructured metamaterials in this work, which consist of highly conductive metallic nanopillars in a durable nitride matrix, have the potential to serve as a novel hybrid material platform for highly tailorable nanoscale metamaterial designs, suitable for high temperature optical applications.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2020

Folding at the Microscale: Enabling Multifunctional 3D Origami‐Architected Metamaterials

Abstract Mechanical metamaterials inspired by the Japanese art of paper folding have gained considerable attention because of their potential to yield deployable and highly tunable assemblies. The inherent foldability of origami structures enlarges the material design space with remarkable properties such as auxeticity and high deformation recoverability and deployability, the latter being key in applications where spatial constraints are pivotal. This work integrates the results of the design, 3D direct laser writing fabrication, and in situ scanning electron microscopic mechanical characterization of microscale origami metamaterials, based on the multimodal assembly of Miura‐Ori tubes. The origami‐architected metamaterials, achieved by means of microfabrication, display remarkable mechanical properties: stiffness and Poisson’s ratio tunable anisotropy, large degree of shape recoverability, multistability, and even reversible auxeticity whereby the metamaterial switches Poisson’s ratio sign during deformation. The findings here reported underscore the scalable and multifunctional nature of origami designs, and pave the way toward harnessing the power of origami engineering at small scales.

Lin, Zhaowen↗
DOE OSTI2026

Physicochemical and Performance Characterization of Six Commercial Organic Solvent Nanofiltration Membranes

This work introduces a novel, gradient-free metamaterial design method based on Gaussian process regression to represent the density field of a unit cell. The dimension of the design space is determined by the covariance matrix dimension in the Gaussian process regression. We propose compressing this matrix using an autoencoder, enabling the decoder to generate the density field and effectively reduce the originally large design space to a lower-dimensional subspace. In this compressed space, we employ an active learning method, Bayesian Adaptive Direct Search (BADS), for efficient exploration of the design space. We demonstrate that for simple 2D designs aimed at maximizing unit cell stiffness, our method yields results comparable to those of standard topology optimization. Furthermore, we extend our approach to various mechanical problems, from linear elasticity to hyperelastic large deformation and elasto-plasticity under finite deformation, to 3D metamaterial design. This illustrates the method’s versatility and effectiveness across a range of applications.

Wu, Haoran↗
DOE OSTI2018

Terahertz biosensing with a graphene-metamaterial heterostructure platform

Terahertz (THz) radiation attracted great interest in the fields of material characterization, nondestructive security screening, clinical diagnostics, and identification of chemicals and molecules. Label-free THz sensing of trace amount of targets including biomolecules is promising because of their rich spectral fingerprint in this electromagnetic region; however, improving the sensitivity remains to be a challenge, partially due to the limitations of THz sources and detectors. The resonantly enhanced electromagnetic fields in metamaterials and metasurfaces offer a potentially viable solution, although highly complicated decoration process is still needed for biosensing on the surface of metamaterials. Here we demonstrate a simple biosensing platform by integrating a monolayer graphene on a THz metamaterial absorber cavity, where the introduction of sensing targets results in a large change of the metamaterial resonant absorption (or reflection) because of their strong interaction with graphene. We experimentally show its ultrahigh sensitivity through detecting trace amount of chlorpyrifos methyl down to 0.2 ng. Furthermore, using simple decoration steps and utilizing DNA to capture thrombin, we further show the feasibility of this platform serving as a sensitive biosensor.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2022

How to see hidden patterns in metamaterials with interpretable machine learning

Machine learning models can assist with metamaterials design by approximating computationally expensive simulators or solving inverse design problems. However, past work has usually relied on black box deep neural networks, whose reasoning processes are opaque and require enormous datasets that are expensive to obtain. Here, in this work, we develop two novel machine learning approaches to metamaterials discovery that have neither of these disadvantages. These approaches, called shape-frequency features and unit-cell templates, can discover 2D metamaterials with user-specified frequency band gaps. Our approaches provide logical rule-based conditions on metamaterial unit-cells that allow for interpretable reasoning processes, and generalize well across design spaces of different resolutions. The templates also provide design flexibility where users can almost freely design the fine resolution features of a unit-cell without affecting the user’s desired band gap.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2018

Hybrid Lithographic and DNA-Directed Assembly of a Configurable Plasmonic Metamaterial That Exhibits Electromagnetically Induced Transparency

Metamaterials are architectures that interact with light in novel ways by virtue of symmetry manipulation, and have opened a window into studying unprecedented light-matter interactions. However, they are commonly fabricated via lithographic methods, are usually static structures, and are limited in how they can react to external stimuli. Here we show that by combining lithographic techniques with DNA-based self-assembly methods, we can construct responsive plasmonic metamaterials that exhibit the plasmonic analog of an effect known as electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), which can dramatically change their spectra upon motion of their constituent parts. Correlative scanning electron microscopy measurements, scattering dark-field microscopy, and computational simulations are performed on single assemblies to determine the relationship between their structures and spectral responses to a variety of external stimuli. The strength of the EIT-like effect in these assemblies can be tuned by precisely controlling the positioning of the plasmonic nanoparticles in these structures. For example, changing the ionic environment or dehydrating the sample will change the conformation of the DNA linkers and therefore the distance between the nanoparticles. Dark-field spectra of individual assemblies show peak shifts of up to many tens of nanometers upon DNA perturbations. This dynamic metamaterial represents a stepping stone toward state-of-the-art plasmonic sensing platforms and next-generation dynamic metamaterials.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2014

All-dielectric metasurface analogue of electromagnetically induced transparency [High Quality Factor Fano-Resonant All-Dielectric Metamaterials]

Fano-resonant plasmonic metamaterials and nanostructures have become a major focus of the nanophotonics fields over the past several years due their ability to produce high quality factor (Q-factor) resonances. The origin of such resonances is the interference between a broad and narrow resonance, ultimately allowing suppression of radiative damping. However, Fano-resonant plasmonic structures still suffer non-radiative damping due to Ohmic loss, ultimately limiting the achievable Q-factors to values less than ~10. Here, we report experimental demonstration of Fano-resonant silicon-based metamaterials that have a response that mimics the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) found in atomic systems. Due to extremely low absorption loss, a record-high quality factor (Q-factor) of 306 was experimentally observed. Furthermore, the unit cell of the metamaterial was designed with a feed-gap which results in strong local field enhancement in the surrounding medium resulting in strong light-matter interaction. This allows the metamaterial to serve as a refractive index sensor with a figure-of-merit (FOM) of 101, far exceeding the performance of previously demonstrated localized surface plasmon resonance sensors.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2017

Near-field spectroscopic investigation of dual-band heavy fermion metamaterials

Broadband tunability is a central theme in contemporary nanophotonics and metamaterials research. Combining metamaterials with phase change media offers a promising approach to achieve such tunability, which requires a comprehensive investigation of the electromagnetic responses of novel materials at subwavelength scales. In this work, we demonstrate an innovative way to tailor band-selective electromagnetic responses at the surface of a heavy fermion compound, samarium sulfide (SmS). By utilizing the intrinsic, pressure sensitive, and multi-band electron responses of SmS, we create a proof-of-principle heavy fermion metamaterial, which is fabricated and characterized using scanning near-field microscopes with < 50 nm spatial resolution. The optical responses at the infrared and visible frequency ranges can be selectively and separately tuned via modifying the occupation of the 4f and 5d band electrons. The unique pressure, doping, and temperature tunability demonstrated represents a paradigm shift for nanoscale metamaterial and metasurface design.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2018

Optical magnetism in planar metamaterial heterostructures

Harnessing artificial optical magnetism has previously required complex two- and three-dimensional structures, such as nanoparticle arrays and split-ring metamaterials. By contrast, planar structures, and in particular dielectric/metal multilayer metamaterials, have been generally considered non-magnetic. Although the hyperbolic and plasmonic properties of these systems have been extensively investigated, their assumed non-magnetic response limits their performance to transverse magnetic (TM) polarization. We propose and experimentally validate a mechanism for artificial magnetism in planar multilayer metamaterials. We also demonstrate that the magnetic properties of high-index dielectric/metal hyperbolic metamaterials can be anisotropic, leading to magnetic hyperbolic dispersion in certain frequency regimes. We show that such systems can support transverse electric polarized interface-bound waves, analogous to their TM counterparts, surface plasmon polaritons. Here, our results open a route for tailoring optical artificial magnetism in lithography-free layered systems and enable us to generalize the plasmonic and hyperbolic properties to encompass both linear polarizations.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2017

Spiraling Light with Magnetic Metamaterial Quarter-Wave Turbines

Miniaturized quarter-wave plate devices empower spin to orbital angular momentum conversion and vector polarization formation, which serve as bridges connecting conventional optical beam and structured light. Enabling the manipulability of additional dimensions as the complex polarization and phase of light, quarter-wave plate devices are essential for exploring a plethora of applications based on orbital angular momentum or vector polarization, such as optical sensing, holography, and communication. Here we propose and demonstrate the magnetic metamaterial quarter-wave turbines at visible wavelength to produce radially and azimuthally polarized vector vortices from circularly polarized incident beam. The magnetic metamaterials function excellently as quarter-wave plates at single wavelength and maintain the quarter-wave phase retardation in broadband, while the turbine blades consist of multiple polar sections, each of which contains homogeneously oriented magnetic metamaterial gratings near azimuthal or radial directions to effectively convert circular polarization to linear polarization and induce phase shift under Pancharatnum-Berry’s phase principle. The perspective concept of multiple polar sections of magnetic metamaterials can extend to other analogous designs in the strongly coupled nanostructures to accomplish many types of light phase-polarization manipulation and structured light conversion in the desired manner.

Science & Technology - Other Topics↗
DOE OSTI2013

Interferometric direction finding with a metamaterial detector

We present measurements and analysis demonstrating useful direction finding of sources in the S band (2–4 GHz) using a metamaterial detector. An augmented metamaterial absorber that supports magnitude and phase measurement of the incident electric field, within each unit cell, is described. The metamaterial is implemented in a commercial printed circuit board process with off-board back-end electronics. We also discuss on-board back-end implementation strategies. Direction finding performance is analyzed for the fabricated metamaterial detector using simulated data and the standard algorithm, MUtiple SIgnal Classification. The performance of this complete system is characterized by its angular resolution as a function of radiation density at the detector. Sources with power outputs typical of mobile communication devices can be resolved at kilometer distances with sub-degree resolution and high frame rates.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗