Past Achievements and Future Challenges in 3D Photonic Metamaterials

TL;DR

This review discusses recent experimental advances in fabricating 3D photonic metamaterials, highlighting their unique optical properties and potential applications, while also addressing ongoing challenges in the field.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of recent progress in 3D photonic metamaterials and discusses future challenges for their development and application.

Findings

Significant progress in fabricating 3D metamaterials

Demonstration of novel optical properties

Identification of key future challenges

Abstract

Photonic metamaterials are man-made structures composed of tailored micro- or nanostructured metallo-dielectric sub-wavelength building blocks that are densely packed into an effective material. This deceptively simple, yet powerful, truly revolutionary concept allows for achieving novel, unusual, and sometimes even unheard-of optical properties, such as magnetism at optical frequencies, negative refractive indices, large positive refractive indices, zero reflection via impedance matching, perfect absorption, giant circular dichroism, or enhanced nonlinear optical properties. Possible applications of metamaterials comprise ultrahigh-resolution imaging systems, compact polarization optics, and cloaking devices. This review describes the experimental progress recently made fabricating three-dimensional metamaterial structures and discusses some remaining future challenges.