The discovery of artificial electromagnetic materials, called metamaterials, not only redefines the human perception of constitutive parameters in electromagnetic theory, but also brings forward new phenomena, such as negative refraction. We provide a comprehensive introduction to the unique characteristics of metamaterials, starting with Maxwell's equations and the kDB coordinate system, and moving through to theoretical concepts and design principles of negative refraction in metamaterials. For each kind of media, including isotropic, anisotropic and bianisotropic metamaterials, we discuss the characteristic waves and their properties. We show examples of negative refraction both theoretically and experimentally.
Metamaterials offer the possibility to control and manipulate electromagnetic radiation. Spoof surface plasmon metamaterials are the focus of this Element of the Metamaterials Series. The fundamentals of spoof surface plasmons are reviewed, and advances on plasmonic metamaterials based on spoof plasmons are presented. Spoof surface plasmon metamaterials on a wide range of geometries are discussed: from planar platforms to waveguides and localized modes, including cylindrical structures, grooves, wedges, dominos or conformal surface plasmons in ultrathin platforms. The Element closes with a review of recent advances and applications such as Terahertz sensing or integrated devices and circuits.
Metamaterials have attracted enormous interests from both physics and engineering communities in the past 20 years, owing to their powerful ability in manipulating electromagnetic waves. However, the functionalities of traditional metamaterials are fixed at the time of fabrication. To control the EM waves dynamically, active components are introduced to the meta-atoms, yielding active metamaterials. Recently, a special kind of active metamaterials, digital coding and programmable metamaterials, are proposed, which can achieve dynamically controllable functionalities using field programmable gate array (FPGA). Most importantly, the digital coding representations of metamaterials set up a bridge between the digital world and physical world, and allow metamaterials to process digital information directly, leading to information metamaterials. In this Element, we review the evolution of information metamaterials, mainly focusing on their basic concepts, design principles, fabrication techn