Hybrid Resonant Metasurfaces

We have developed a new fabrication method for non-primitive metasurfaces. Thereby the colors of these metasurfaces represent and visualizes light-matter interactions. To showcase the capabilities of these metasurfaces, the researchers recreated Lichtenstein’s iconic Sinking Sun at the nanoscale. This reproduction illustrates how specific resonant states—or, in simpler terms, colors—can be engineered through careful manipulation of geometry and materials. As a result, these metasurfaces are ideally suited for encoding information in ways that remain visually imperceptible, offering a robust deterrent against counterfeiting.

Chemical Engineering of Cu–Sn Disordered Network Metamaterials

The design and fabrication of large-area metamaterials is an ongoing challenge. Increasingly disordered materials are being explored as they offer new routes in fabrication and access to optical phenomena that rely on their intrinsic disorder. Many disordered materials do not rely on precise nanofabrication methods but can be realized through self-assembly of structural units, dewetting, or chemical dealloying. In our work, we show how simple changes in the initial chemistry before dealloying can be used to engineer perfect absorption over a broad frequency range.

Network Metamaterials on BBC Science in Action

Structural colours have drawn wide attention for their potential as a future printing technology for various applications, ranging from biomimetic tissues to adaptive camouflage materials. However, an efficient approach to realise robust colours with a scalable fabrication technique is still lacking, hampering the realisation of practical applications with this platform. Here we develop a new approach based on large scale network metamaterials, which combine dealloyed subwavelength structures at the nanoscale with loss-less, ultra-thin dielectrics coatings.