Photonic Metamaterials

The Photonic Metamaterials Special Interest Group encompasses a diverse range of topics, devices, and applications centred on the manipulation of light in the visible and infrared at sub-wavelength scales. Applications include optical components, communications, energy harvesting, photocatalysis, imaging and displays, augmented reality, data-storage technologies, metrology, security and sensing devices. Broad functionality is enabled by the diversity in underlying material systems and the technology to fabricate at the nanoscale, including conventional and non-conventional plasmonic metals, dielectrics, phase change or epsilon-near-zero materials, and flexible substrates.

The Group is keen to engage with members from industry and academia interested in collaborating in these areas, and in supporting their development, promotion, and expansion throughout the UK.

Through various engagement events we aim to establish a hub for discussion, networking, showcasing, and skill/capability matching amongst our members.

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.