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Resources & Roadmaps

On this page, you will find a library of internal (within the Network) and external (from sources such as UK Government offices and funding agencies) documents which show:

Strategic Documentation

Unlocking the Potential of Metamaterials – IMeCHe Policy Report (2025)

This IMechE and UK Metamaterials Network report highlights how metamaterials (engineered structures with properties beyond conventional materials) can enable next-generation performance across sectors such as healthcare, sustainability, and aerospace. It sets out key recommendations to strengthen research, accelerate commercialisation, scale up manufacturing, build skills, and raise awareness to unlock their full social and economic potential.

Commercialising Metamaterials – Institute of Physics Report  (2025)

The IOP’s impact project pathfinder, developed with the UK Metamaterials Network, explores the barriers and opportunities in commercialising metamaterials across sectors including health, sustainability, and aerospace. The document highlights the need for a coordinated, long-term UK vision to translate cutting-edge research into real-world industrial applications and unlock wider societal and economic impact.

UK Metamaterials Network News Bulletin 2nd July 2025, including: 1) Metamaterials in the industrial strategy, 2) Launch of the MetaHub by Lord Patrick Vallance

The UK Metamaterials News Bulletin 02.07.25 highlights growing momentum for metamaterials in the UK, including recognition in the national Industrial Strategy, major funding investments such as the £19.6m MetaHub, and new initiatives to support industry collaboration. It showcases expanding opportunities across sectors and encourages engagement through upcoming events and programmes aimed at accelerating research translation and strengthening the UK metamaterials community.

GO-Science Rapid Technology Assessment Metamaterials (2025)

The UK Government’s Rapid Technology Assessment highlights metamaterials as an advanced materials platform with engineered properties that can drive innovation across sectors including telecoms, energy, healthcare, and defence. It emphasises both the significant opportunities (such as reducing size, weight and power and enabling next-generation technologies) and the need for better coordination, skills, and scale-up support to translate the UK’s strong research base into commercial and economic impact.

Research Consulting – ‘Demand for cohort-based doctoral training in metamaterials in the UK’ (2023)

This UK Metamaterials Network report examines industry demand for doctoral training, highlighting skills gaps and the growing need for highly trained researchers to support the field’s development. It emphasises the importance of strengthened university–industry collaboration, broader skillsets, and targeted training programmes to translate the UK’s strong research base into commercial and industrial impact.

UK Metamaterials Network – Case For Support

This UK Metamaterials Network case for support outlines the significant scientific and economic potential of metamaterials as advanced, engineered materials enabling novel functionalities across sectors such as energy, communications, healthcare, and defence. It highlights the UK’s strong research leadership but identifies a need for greater coordination, collaboration, and skills development to translate innovation into commercial impact and remain globally competitive.

Policy Submissions

External Documents

Space Applications Catapult – ‘Why Space? The Opportunity for Materials Science and Innovation’ (2024)

The Satellite Applications Catapult’s Why Space? report highlights how the space environment, particularly microgravity, creates unique opportunities for advancing materials science, enabling new discoveries and manufacturing approaches that are not possible on Earth. It argues that closer collaboration between the space and materials communities could unlock significant economic growth, innovation, and breakthroughs across sectors, supported by a rapidly expanding global space market.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute – ‘Critical Technology Tracker: The global race for future power’ (2023) 

The ASPI Critical Technology Tracker highlights the intensifying global competition for leadership in emerging technologies. It underscores the strategic importance of sustained investment, talent development, and international collaboration for countries such as the UK to remain competitive and secure their position in future technological and economic leadership.

Med-Tech Innovation News – ‘Focus on: UK Metamaterials Network’ (2023)

The article highlights the role of the UK Metamaterials Network in connecting academia, industry, and government to accelerate the development and commercialisation of metamaterials technologies. It emphasises the wide-ranging potential of metamaterials across sectors such as healthcare and engineering, alongside the need to strengthen collaboration and translate research into real-world applications.

Department for Business, Energy & Industial Strategy – ‘UK Innovation Strategy’ (2021)

The UK Innovation Strategy sets out the government’s vision to make the UK a global hub for innovation by 2035, driven by increased investment in R&D, support for businesses, and the development of world-leading talent and institutions. It emphasises the need for a strong, coordinated innovation ecosystem, linking industry, academia, and government, to accelerate technological advancement, address global challenges, and drive economic growth.

EPSRC – Metamaterials ‘Big Idea’

The “Metamaterials Big Idea” report sets out a vision for a UK-led “metamaterials revolution,” highlighting how engineered materials could deliver transformative solutions across energy, communications, healthcare, security, and sustainability. It emphasises the need for coordinated national investment in research, skills, manufacturing, and commercialisation to translate the UK’s strong scientific leadership into global economic, societal, and technological impact.

IMechE – ‘SUSTAINABLE, INCLUSIVE, INNOVATIVE: THE ROLE OF ENGINEERING IN SPORT’ (2023)

The IMechE sports engineering report highlights the UK’s global leadership in sports engineering while emphasising opportunities to further grow innovation, start-ups, and economic impact through increased support for research and development. It also stresses the importance of sustainability and inclusivity, calling for stronger collaboration to ensure advances in sports technology benefit both elite and grassroots sport.

Institute of Physics – ‘Shaping the Debate: Summary of 2023 submissions and next steps’ (2023)

The IOP’s Shaping the Debate report summarises community input used to identify priority science and innovation topics and guide future impact projects that influence policy, investment, and innovation strategy. It highlights areas such as metamaterials, space technologies, and AI as emerging opportunities, emphasising the role of collaboration and evidence-building to accelerate commercialisation and maximise economic and societal impact.

Lux Research – Metamaterials Market Forecast 2019 Executive Summary

The Lux Research executive summary forecasts rapid growth in the metamaterials market, estimating it will reach around $10.7 billion by 2030, driven initially by applications in 5G communications and later by sensing technologies such as radar and lidar. It highlights both the strong commercial potential and disruptive impact of metamaterials, enabling smaller, more efficient devices while posing risks for companies that fail to adapt to this emerging design-led technology trend.

Science and Technology Committee – Written Evidence for ‘My Science Enquiry’ (2022)

The article highlights how the UK Metamaterials Network is building a connected ecosystem across academia, industry, and government to accelerate the development and commercialisation of metamaterials technologies. It also emphasises the wide-ranging potential of these advanced materials, particularly in areas such as healthcare, and the importance of collaboration and knowledge-sharing to translate research into real-world applications and impact

UKRI Innovate UK KTN – ‘Commercialising Metamaterials: The benefits to your business’

This Innovate UK report highlights the wide commercial potential of metamaterials across sectors including communications, energy, healthcare, aerospace, and construction, showcasing real-world applications such as advanced antennas, sensing systems, and noise control solutions. It emphasises the importance of collaboration, skills, and coordinated support to overcome barriers to scale-up and accelerate the successful commercialisation and industrial adoption of metamaterials.

UKRI Innovate UK KTN – ‘Materials and Manufacturing Vision 2050’

This Innovate UK report highlights the wide commercial potential of metamaterials across sectors including communications, energy, healthcare, aerospace, and construction, with applications ranging from advanced antennas and sensing systems to noise control and thermal management. It emphasises the need for strong collaboration, skills development, and coordinated support to overcome scale-up challenges and accelerate the successful commercialisation and industrial adoption of metamaterials.

Biruta Kresling, Mechanical Summer School Slide, 2026

Network Governance

Further Useful Links

Grant Writing Training talk by Professor Andrea Di Falco

Metamaterials Roadmaps

The UK Metamaterials Network (UKMMN) welcomes the roadmaps written by expert members of the community reflecting on the six special interest group areas covered by the metamaterials community in the UK: 1) Active Metamaterials; 2) Acoustic Metamaterials 3) Mechanical Metamaterials; 4) Photonic Metamaterials; 5) Theory, Modelling & AI; and 6) Wireless & Microwave Metamaterials (now Microwave & THz) as well as the roadmap on Manufacturing and Scale-Up. These roadmaps represent a titanic effort by the community to draw together the key challenges and opportunities across the many domains represented within metamaterials research across the UK. 

The Metamaterial Roadmaps – Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics – IOPscience

Acoustic Metamaterials Roadmap (Accepted Manuscript)

Chaplain et al 2025 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6463/add306

Today, acoustic metamaterials form a core area of metamaterial research. They offer bespoke wave control, achievable through their rationally designed structure and are at the forefront of metamaterial applications and commercialisation. They find purpose across science and defence sectors in wave filtering, sensing, communications, energy harvesting, thermal emission control, and aeroacoustics, to name but a few. They enjoy success in metropolitan environments with designer audio and noise mitigation falling within their remit; acoustic metamaterial technologies are already penetrating the market across audio and healthcare sectors.

The landscape of acoustic metamaterial research is continually expanding, now incorporating several wave regimes under a broader definition that we adopt here. The diversity of acoustic metamaterial research displays how they exist not only to translate electromagnetic phenomena, but also to provide a unique platform for exploring all metamaterial physics, and for solving key societal challenges.

The aim of this Roadmap is to present a summary of the state of acoustic metamaterial research and innovation in 2024, with opinions on the challenges and future opportunities from a group of renowned experts, covering key interdisciplinary areas from fundamental acoustics to device implementation.

Active Metamaterials Roadmap

See Simon Pope, Diane Roth et al, ‘The 2026 Active Metamaterials Roadmap.’ (2026).

Active metamaterials are engineered structures that possess novel properties that can be changed after the point of manufacture. Their novel properties arise predominantly from their physical structure, as opposed to their chemical composition and can be changed through means such as direct energy addition into wave paths, or physically changing/morphing the structure in response to both a user or environmental input.

Active metamaterials are currently of wide interest to the physics community and encompass a range of sub-domains in applied physics (e.g. photonic, microwave, acoustic, mechanical, etc.). They possess the potential to provide solutions that are more suitable to specific applications, or which allow novel properties to be produced which cannot be achieved with passive metamaterials, such as time-varying or gain enhancement effects. They have the potential to help solve some of the important current and future problems faced by the advancement of modern society, such as achieving net-zero, sustainability, healthcare and equality goals. Despite their huge potential, the added complexity of their design and operation, compared to passive metamaterials creates challenges to the advancement of the field, particularly beyond theoretical and lab-based experiments.

This roadmap brings together experts in all types of active metamaterials and across a wide range of areas of applied physics. The objective is to provide an overview of the current state of the art and the associated current/future challenges, with the hope that the required advances identified create a roadmap for the future advancement and application of this field.

Manufacturing & Scale-up Roadmap

Pending publication.

Over the past decades, significant advancements in manufacturing techniques have enabled the realisation of various types of metamaterials, ranging from conventional methods such as subtractive and formative manufacturing to disruptive approaches like additive manufacturing. This roadmap explores the current-state-of-the art manufacturing techniques for metamaterials, highlighting key challenges and opportunities in scaling up production and commercialisation. Structured around three metamaterial categories – mechanical, electromagnetic and acoustic – and three manufacturing approaches –additive, subtractive and formative – this roadmap presents insights from leading experts on the future of metamaterial fabrication, offering perspectives on overcoming barriers to large-scale implementation.

Mechanical Metamaterials Roadmap

See Olly Duncan, Marcelo A. Dias, Andrew Alderson et al, ‘Roadmap on mechanical metamaterials’ (2026).

The mechanical metamaterials roadmap will cover the various core types of mechanical metamaterial, ordered by their anomalous properties. With the large volume of work to date focussing on auxetic (negative Poisson’s ratio) mechanical metamaterials, this property is split into five sections (each with different authors). A final section will summarise current and potential application areas, using current products as case studies showing requirements for industry uptakes. The roadmap will be edited by Prof Alderson, Dr Duncan, and Dr Dias.

Microwave & Wireless Metamaterials Roadmap

See, Stephen D Henthorn, Qammer H Abbasi, and Akram Alomainy et al, ‘Roadmap on Microwave and Wireless Metasurfaces’.

The Microwave & Wireless metasurfaces roadmap brings together expertise from academia, industry and government to outline an exciting period of development in the field as metamaterial products become increasingly present in the market. The authors attribute this change to telecommunications and the development of steerable antennas for satellite communications. Furthermore, as the authors note, ‘since 2019 there has been an explosion of interest in metasurfaces from the wireless communications theory community due to the concept of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces […] which can vary the reflected phase from many independently controlled elements, enabling some control of the wireless propagation channel.’

The authors have identified some remaining scientific challenges, such as the fundamental bandwidth limitations of metamaterials due to their resonant behaviour; that metamaterial behaviour is often heavily contingent on the incident angle of the electromagnetic wave to the material; and the difficulties of reconfigurability, particularly at higher frequencies. The authors also identify practical challenges in environments such as healthcare, and defence, where the metamaterials need to maintain their performance, despite vulnerability to variations in conditions. The greatest challenge identified is the integration of metamaterials into products and systems.

The roadmap looks towards solutions to these problems, and the authors have highlighted opportunities such as Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Additive manufacturing (although the latter poses difficulties in scale-up). The authors point out that an alternative and more scalable approach is the integration of metamaterial fabrication into existing mass production methods, such as roll-to-roll processing.

Theory, Modelling & AI Roadmap

See Bryn Davies, Stefan Szyniszewski et al, ‘Roadmap on metamaterial theory, modelling and design’, J. Phys. D: Applied Physics, 58 (2025)

The growth of metamaterial science has brought to the fore the power of micro-structuring materials to achieve previously unattainable properties. Metamaterial-based breakthroughs have had wide-ranging technological implications, including realising materials with effectively negative material parameters, allowing for design freedoms such as the ability to finely tune highly anisotropic properties or practical considerations such as being able to greatly reduce mass. However, the often complex and many-degree-of-freedom nature of the small-scale geometries that have facilitated these breakthroughs come with associated challenges. Traditional direct numerical simulations can incur significant computational costs (due to the need to use very fine meshes). This, combined with the high-dimensional associated parameter spaces, can render design problems computationally intractable. As a result, researchers have developed a variety of strategies to characterise metamaterials’ properties, seeking approaches that greatly simplify problems while still capturing the material’s key features.

Photonic Metamaterials Roadmap

See, Sebastian A. Schulz, Rupert F. Oulton, Mitchell Kenney et al, ‘Roadmap on Photonic Metasurfaces’, Applied Physics Letters, 124 (2024)

The authors of the Photonics Roadmap present the case for the relevance and potential of the swiftly developing field of metasurfaces in optics. This flourishing field touches on an astoundingly wide range of applications. The ‘metasurfaces’ gain their properties from not only their constituent materials, but from the shape and arrangement of the ‘meta-atoms’ which form them on a nanoscopic scale. This allows for complex designs, with multifarious properties and importantly metasurface technology offers flat optical components with great flexibility. The advances common across the articles included in the roadmap emphasise that the advantages of the technology include the reduction of bulk, and improvements in efficiency and sustainability.

This roadmap is the culmination of a world-wide effort by leading experts on metasurfaces and will provide readers with an up-to-date reference of the current status, understanding, and direction of photonic metasurface research.