Metasurface-enabled beam shaping for sustainable super-resolution focusing devices

几十年来，轻物质相互作用的控制一直是科学界和工业界的极大兴趣。波的传播可以通过使用各种材料和/或波传播的介质的几何形状来操纵。自2000年初以来，超材料（MTM）及其2D对应物，超表面（MTS），已经被提出作为实现自然材料无法实现的电磁（EM）响应的手段（Engeta N，2006）。然而，尽管有这些不自然的效果，但它们受到自然界的启发，自然界由周期性排列的小于入射波长的小金属电介质几何形状组成。这导致波观察到均匀介质，而不是用于创建它们的单个几何形状。这使得能够通过适当地设计所使用的材料、布置和几何形状来定制这种人造介质的EM特性。因此，MTMS和MTS的使用为提高天线和传感器等广泛应用中的器件性能开辟了新的途径。在这一领域，MTMS的发展对透镜天线和成像应用等聚焦器件具有很大的好处。然而，这种应用由于其窄带设计而受到阻碍。这使得它们难以用于需要宽带响应的应用。如今，全世界都致力于设计尽可能可靠且具有可重构特性的设备。这是因为全球产生的电子废物越来越多，因为它们的设计涉及的材料主要是金属和塑料（塑料，陶瓷等）。这些材料需要相当长的时间才能降解，从数百年到数千年不等。在这种情况下，MTM和MTS遭受相同的问题，因为它们基本上是用相同的原材料制成的。因此，在这些人工电磁介质开发的早期阶段，解决环境问题的可能性是非常重要的，因为它们仍处于开发阶段。本项目将受到MTM和MTS令人难以置信的广泛应用所带来的令人兴奋的机会的启发，并致力于在使用可持续和环保技术的同时使其可重新配置。我将研究有关超材料的物理定律，以了解所需的电磁响应，然后设计这些材料进行实验验证。与此同时，将测试各种可重构和可持续材料，以将其应用于这些设计中，以减轻技术浪费的问题。这将导致使用可生物降解材料的超紧凑、低成本和超分辨率成像应用的发展，同时具有重新配置的能力。这些成像应用将在不同的频率范围内开发，重点是太赫兹频率范围，因为它为高速通信和生物医学成像等领域提供了机会。

For decades the controlling of light matter interaction has been of great interest to both the scientific and the industrial communities. The propagation of waves can be manipulated through the use of various materials and/or geometries of the medium where the wave is propagating.Since the early 2000's metamaterials (MTMs) and their 2D counterpart, metasurfaces (MTSs), have been proposed as a means of achieving electromagnetic (EM) responses which natural materials are not capable of achieving (Engeta N, 2006). However, despite these unnatural effects they are inspired by nature being composed of periodically arranged small metallic-dielectric geometries which are smaller than the incident wavelength. This results in the wave observing a homogeneous medium rather than the individual geometries used to create them. This enables the ability to tailor the EM properties of such artificial media by properly engineering the materials, arrangement and geometries used. In doing so, the use of MTMS and MTSs opens new paths to improve the performance of devices in a wide range of applications such as antennas and sensors.In this realm, the development of MTMs has been of great benefit to focusing devices such as lens-antennas and imaging applications. However, such applications have been hindered due to their narrow band designs. This causes them to be difficult for applications where broadband responses are required. Nowadays, there is a worldwide commitment to design devices as much reliable as possible and with reconfigurable properties. This is due to the fact that there is a growing amount of e-waste (electronic waste) being produced globally because of the materials involved in their design: mainly metals and dielectrics (plastics, ceramics etc.). These materials take a considerable time to degrade, from hundreds to thousands of years. In this context, MTMs and MTSs suffer from the same issue because they are basically made with the same raw materials. Therefore, it is important to address the possibility of environmental issues in the early stages of development of these artificial electromagnetic media at this stage where they are still under development.This project will be inspired by the exciting opportunities presented by the incredibly broad uses of MTMs and MTSs and working to make them reconfigurable while using sustainable and environmentally friendly technologies. I will be studying the governing physics laws with regards to metamaterials to gain an understanding of the EM responses required and then designing these materials to be demonstrated experimentally. All the while a wide range of reconfigurable and sustainable materials will be tested for their application into these designs as to alleviate the issues of technological waste. This will lead to the development of ultra-compact, low-costing and super-resolution imaging applications using biodegradable materials while having the capability of being reconfigured. These imaging applications will be developed at different frequency ranges with emphasis to the Terahertz frequency range due the opportunities it offers to fields such as high-speed communications and biomedical imaging.