Information Metamaterials

Information metamaterials build a bridge between the physical world and digital world, putting metamaterials into real world applications.

Metamaterials have attracted enormous interests because of their their powerful ability in manipulating electromagnetic waves. In this Element, we review the evolution of information metamaterials. Future developments of information metamaterials are also envisioned.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 techniques, experimental measurement and potential applications. Future developments of information metamaterials are also envisioned.