Bioinspired Multicontrollable Metasurfaces for Electromagnetic Applications

Metasurfaces provide an extraordinary facility for engineered manipulation of electromagnetic radiation. These devices have been designed, fabricated, and tested for single-band and multiband operation as absorbers, filters, polarization converters, sensors, lenses, etc. Certain types of materials can be incorporated in a metasurface to control it through an agent such as temperature, mechanical stress, electrostatic field, and magnetostatic field. Inspired by multicontrollability in the bioworld, the concept of pixelated meta-atoms has emerged for multicontrollable metasurfaces. In this concept, each meta-atom is a finite array of pixels separated from their neighbors, the number of pixels per meta-atom depending upon the application. Each pixel can be either bare or patched by an electrically, or thermally, or magnetically, or optically controllable material. Multicontrollable absorbers, filters, and polarization converters have been designed to maximize device reliability.