Browsing by Subject "Metamaterial"

As research in electromagnetics has expanded, it has given rise to the examination of metamaterials, which possess nontrivial electromagnetic material properties such as engineered permittivity and permeability. Aside from their application in the microwave industry, metamaterials have been associated with novel phenomena since their invention, including sub-wavelength focusing in negative refractive index slabs, evanescent wave amplification in negative index media, and invisibility cloaking and its demonstration at microwave frequency with controlled material properties in space.

Effective medium theory plays a key role in the development and application of metamaterials, simplifying the electromagnetic analysis of complex engineered metamaterial composites. Any metamaterial composite can be treated as a homogeneous or inhomogeneous medium, while every unit structure in the composite is represented by its permittivity and permeability tensor. Hence, studying an electromagnetic wave's interaction with complex composites is equivalent to studying the interaction between the wave and an artificial material.

This dissertation first examines the application of a magnetic metamaterial lens in wireless power transfer (WPT) technology, which is proposed to enhance the mutual coupling between two magnetic dipoles in the system. I examine and investigate the boundary effect in the finite sized magnetic metamaterial lens using a numerical simulator. I propose to implement an anisotropic and indefinite lens in a WPT system to simplify the lens design and relax the lens dimension requirements. The numerical results agree with the analytical model proposed by Smith et al. in 2011, where lenses are assumed to be infinitely large.

By manipulating the microwave properties of a magnetic metamaterial, the nonlinear properties come into the scope of this research. I chose split-ring resonators (SRR) loaded with varactors to develop nonlinear metamaterials. Analogous to linear metamaterials, I developed a nonlinear effective medium model to characterize nonlinear processes in microwave nonlinear metamaterials. I proposed both experimental and numerical methods here for the first time to quantify nonlinear metamaterials' effective properties. I experimentally studied three nonlinear processes: power-dependent frequency tuning, second harmonic generation, and three-wave mixing. Analytical results based on the effective medium model agree with the experimental results under the low power excitation assumption and non-depleted pump approximation. To overcome the low power assumption in the effective medium model for nonlinear metamaterials, I introduced general circuit oscillation models for varactor/diode-loaded microwave metamaterial structures, which provides a qualitative prediction of microwave nonlinear metamaterials' responses at relatively high power levels when the effective medium model no longer fits.

In addition to 1D nonlinear processes, this dissertation also introduces the first 2D microwave nonlinear field mapping apparatus, which is capable of simultaneously capturing both the magnitude and phase of generated harmonic signals from nonlinear metamaterial mediums. I designed a C-band varactor loaded SRR that is matched to the frequency and space limitation of the 2D mapper. The nonlinear field generation and scattering properties from both a single nonlinear element and a nonlinear metamaterial medium composite are experimentally captured in this 2D mapper, and the results qualitatively agree with numerical results based on the effective medium model.

Over the last twenty years, progress on metamaterials (MMs), defined as three-dimensional artificial composites, has sprouted unprecedented phenomena through the manipulation of electromagnetic, acoustic and other waves, making the connection \textit{from structure to function}. By virtue of their spatial and spectral control of wave-matter interactions, MMs have emerged as a powerful building block for practical applications, including imaging, sensing, energy harvesting, beam shaping and steering, and many more. In recent years, the metasurface, as an alternative to volumetric metamaterials, with its reduced 2D profile, has gained increased attention for applications where weight, power and cost are of importance. In this dissertation, I will mainly explore two optical applications where the flexibility in design of a metasurface provides unique capabilities. In one application, waveguide holography, a multifunctional metasurface is used to couple light from a waveguide to free space, forming multicolor or multipolarization holograms. In the second application, a metasurface is used to enhance optical bistability.

First, in this dissertation I will present an investigation of a multicolor computer-generated hologram (CGH) in an all-dielectric metamaterial waveguide system. Light beams from three different color laser sources (red, green and blue) are coupled into the waveguide via a single period grating without any beam-splitters or prisms. A multicolor holographic image can be decoupled in the far field through a binary CGH without any lenses. This technology enables lens-free, ultra-miniature augmented and virtual reality displays. Then, I will continue to illustrate polarization-selective waveguide holography at optical frequencies based on a similar metamaterial multilayer system. I will show that two orthogonally polarized, spatially separated or overlapped holographic images can be incorporated into a single binary CGH, and use these two images to produce composite, stereo vision, 3D effect images observable using linear or circularly polarized lens glasses. Both polarizations are also used to construct radially and azimuthally polarized beams. The fundamental mode and the second mode of TM and TE modes in the waveguide are used to guide the two polarization states. We envision that incorporating polarization selection into waveguide holograms may be used to realize chip-scale displays and beams for optical trapping.

Furthermore, I will introduce another example of the principle \textit{from structure to function}, optical bistablity, in a film-coupled metasurface system, which is a promising platform for low-energy and all-optical switches. The large field enhancements that can be achieved in the dielectric spacer region between a nanopatch optical antenna and a metallic substrate can substantially enhance optical nonlinear processes. Utilizing a dielectric material that exhibits an optical Kerr effect as the spacer layer, we propose a new simulation method to vividly show the optical bistability processes. We expect this new method to be highly accurate compared with other numerical approaches, such as those based on graphical post-processing techniques, since it self-consistently solves for both the spatial field distribution and the intensity-dependent refractive index distribution of the spacer layer. This method offers an alternative approach to finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) modelling. One of the bistability metasurface designs exhibits exceptionally low switching intensities, corresponding to switching energies on the order of tens of attojoules. We propose our method as an effective tool for designing all-optical switches and modulators.

Acoustic metamaterials are a family of engineered materials that can be designed to possess flexible acoustic properties. They are composed of subwavelength periodic structures that can be homogenized as effective materials within the designed frequency bands. Acoustic wave controlling devices with spatially inhomogeneous or/and anisotropic acoustic properties can be designed with metamaterials. The early versions of acoustic metamaterials generally share several drawbacks that limit their applications: relatively high loss, narrow bandwidth, as well as difficulty in fabricating multiple samples with uniform properties. In this work, we approach these issues with a family of geometry-based acoustic metamaterials and demonstrate several devices based on these building blocks with various wave manipulation functionalities. The presented acoustic metamaterial-based devices are categorized into two kinds. The first kind of devices, including negative refraction prism, planar acoustic lenses, beam-steering metasurfaces and phase acoustic holograms, control the propagation or the states of existence of acoustic waves. The second kind focuses on a reciprocal process—instead of controlling the forward propagation, the sensing signals are modulated with randomized resonant metamaterials to realize computation sensing.

Our research approach is summarized as follows: firstly, we designed various metamaterial unit cells as the building blocks, adding to the existing unit cell library. Particularly, a family of labyrinthine or space-coiling unit cells provide access to a broader materials parameters space previously inaccessible by conventional spring-mass model-based unit cell designs. Second, with the extended unit cell library, we designed thin planar wave modulation devices, including acoustic lenses and metasurfaces that can bend the acoustic beam as predicted by the Generalized Snell’s Law. Third, we extend the spatially inhomogeneous modulation from 1D to 2D by designing computer generated phase holograms. Last but not least, a metamaterial-based compressive sensor is designed and demonstrated for the localization of multiple audio sources and the separation of overlapping audio signals.