Inkjet Printing "Impossible Materials" – Bend Light, Manipulate Energy, or Have Chameleon-Like Abilities - Californianewstimes.com
Engineers develop cheap and scalable ways to create metamaterials that manipulate microwave energy in ways that traditional materials cannot.
Engineers at Tufts University have developed new ways to more efficiently produce materials that behave abnormally when interacting with microwave energy. This can affect telecommunications, GPS, radar, mobile devices, and medical devices. These materials, called metamaterials, can theoretically bend the energy around the object to make it invisible, focus the energy transfer on the focused beam, and reconstruct the absorption like a chameleon. Sometimes called "impossible material". Or transmission in different frequency ranges.
Innovations described today Nature Electronics, Using low-cost inkjet printing to build metamaterials, making methods widely accessible and scalable, while being able to apply to highly adaptable surfaces, interface with the biological environment, etc. It also offers the benefits of. It is also the first demonstration of the ability to electrically "adjust" the properties of metamaterials using organic polymers.
Electromagnetic metamaterials and metasurfaces (two-dimensional counterparts) are composite structures that interact with electromagnetic waves in a unique way. The material is composed of small structures that are smaller than the wavelength of the influencing energy and are carefully arranged in a repeating pattern. The orderly construction allows for the design of non-traditional mirrors, lenses, and filters that can block, enhance, reflect, transmit, or bend waves beyond the possibilities offered by conventional materials. Shows the wave interaction function.
Tufts engineers made metamaterials by using conductive polymers as substrates and inkjet printing specific patterns of electrodes to create microwave cavities. Resonators are an important component used in communication devices and help filter selected frequencies of absorbed or transmitted energy. The printed device can be electrically adjusted to adjust the range of frequencies that the modulator can filter.
Metamaterial devices operating in the microwave spectrum have the potential for widespread application in telecommunications, GPS, radar, and mobile devices, and metamaterials can significantly improve signal sensitivity and transmit power. The research-generated metamaterials can also be applied to medical device communications. This is because the biocompatibility of thin-film organic polymers allows the incorporation of enzyme binding sensors, while its inherent flexibility allows the device to be molded into a suitable surface for use. Inside or inside the body.
"We have demonstrated the ability to electrically adjust the properties of meta-surfaces and metadevices operating in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum," said Fiorenzo Omenet, professor of engineering at Tufts University's Faculty of Engineering, Frank C. Doble. I will. The author of Tufts Silklab, where the material was created, and the corresponding study. "Our work represents a promising step compared to current metadevice technology, which relies heavily on complex and costly materials and manufacturing processes."
The tuning strategy developed by the research team relies entirely on thin film materials that can be processed and deposited by mass-scalable techniques such as printing and coating on a variety of substrates. Due to the ability to adjust the electrical properties of the substrate polymer, the authors have a much wider range of microwave energies and maximum frequencies (5 GHz) than previously assumed possible with non-metamaterials (<0.1). I was able to operate the device. GHz).
The development of metamaterials for visible light with nanometer-scale wavelengths is still in its infancy due to the technical challenge of creating small arrays of substructures at that scale, but microwaves with centimeter-scale wavelengths. Metamaterials for energy are more acceptable for solving common manufacturing methods. The authors say that the manufacturing methods described using inkjet printing and other forms of deposition on thin film conductive polymers may begin to test the limits of metamaterials operating at higher frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. Suggests.
"This study is potentially just the beginning," said Giorgio Bonaccini, a former postdoctoral fellow in Omenette's lab at Stanford University and the lead author of the study. "We hope that our proof-of-concept devices will facilitate further research into how well organic and electronic materials and devices can be used in reconstructable metamaterials and metasurfaces throughout the electromagnetic spectrum."
See also: Giorgio E. Bonacchini and Fiorenzo G. "Reconfigurable Microwave Metadevices Based on Organic Electrochemical Transistors" by Omenetto, June 21, 2021 Nature Electronics..
DOI: 10.1038 / s41928-021-00590-0
Inkjet Printing "Impossible Materials" – Bend Light, Manipulate Energy, or Have Chameleon-Like Abilities Source link Inkjet Printing "Impossible Materials" – Bend Light, Manipulate Energy, or Have Chameleon-Like Abilities
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