Materiatronics: Modular analysis of arbitrary meta-atoms

TL;DR

This paper introduces a modular analysis framework called 'materiatronics' for characterizing complex meta-atoms in metamaterials, enabling efficient design and analysis of their electromagnetic properties, including bianisotropic and nonreciprocal behaviors.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel modular approach to analyze and design arbitrary linear meta-atoms, supported by computational tools, facilitating advanced metamaterial engineering.

Findings

Decomposition of complex meta-atom responses into fundamental polarization phenomena

All-direction characterization of electromagnetic properties

Design of a metasurface with unitary circular dichroism

Abstract

Within the paradigm of metamaterials and metasurfaces, electromagnetic properties of composite materials can be engineered by shaping or modulating their constituents, so-called meta-atoms. Synthesis and analysis of complex-shape meta-atoms with general polarization properties is a challenging task. In this paper, we demonstrate that the most general response can be conceptually decomposed into a set of basic, fundamental polarization phenomena, which enables immediate all-direction characterization of electromagnetic properties of arbitrary linear metamaterials and metasurfaces. The proposed platform of modular characterization (called "materiatronics") is tested on several examples of bianisotropic and nonreciprocal meta-atoms. As a demonstration of the potential of the modular analysis, we use it to design a single-layer metasurface of vanishing thickness with unitary circular dichroism. The analysis approach developed in this paper is supported by a ready-to-use computational code and can be further extended to meta-atoms engineered for other types of wave interactions, such as acoustics and mechanics.