RIA: Effective Media Characterization and Optimization of Optically-Active Composite Materials: Applications from Microwave to Optical Frequencies

最近，工业界和学术界的研究人员对复杂复合材料产生了浓厚的兴趣，因为它们可以表现出不同寻常的特性，如果设计得当，有益的电磁性能。这方面的一个例子是手性或光学活性材料，其宏观上是微小的、随机嵌入宿主介质中的手型包裹体。这项研究项目的目标是发展一种确定性的能力，从宏观上描述自然发生的和人工制造的手性材料。这种能力在这些材料的设计中至关重要，以优化其有益的电磁特性。这个研究计划奖项目将通过一个综合的研究计划来解决这个问题，该计划将把计算方法和确定有效本构参数的分析模型和技术。耗时和计算密集的数值模拟将通过使用等效边界条件模型和实施并行计算算法，以产生既有意义又在时间上容易处理的结果。一旦知道了有效描述符，它们将被应用于诸如光纤的广泛问题，光学频带中的器件和波导，以及微波频率下的吸收体和微贴片天线基板。最后，将进行实验测量，以验证这些方法和结果，并评估宏观模型的准确性。

Recently, industrial and academic researchers have developed a keen interest in complex composite materials since they can exhibit unusual and, when properly designed, beneficial electromagnetic properties. An example of this is a chiral, or optically active, material which macroscopically is a large collection of tiny, handed inclusions randomly embedded in a host medium. The objective of this research project is the development of a deterministic capability for macroscopically characterizing both naturally-occurring and artificially-created chiral materials. This capability is crucial in the design of these materials to optimize their beneficial electromagnetic characteristics. This Research Initiative Award project will address this issue through a comprehensive program of research which will combine computational methods with analytical models and techniques to ascertain the effective constitutive parameters. The time-consuming and computationally intensive numerical simulations will be assisted by the use of both equivalent boundary condition models and the implementation of parallel computational algorithms in order to produce results which are both meaningful and temporally tractable. Once the effective descriptors are known they will be applied to a wide range of problems such as optical fibers, devices and waveguides in the optical frequency bands and absorbers and micropatch antenna substrates at microwave frequencies. Finally, experimental measurements will be performed to both validate these methods and results, and to evaluate the accuracy of the macroscopic models.