Reconfigurable room temperature metamaterial infrared emitter

TitleReconfigurable room temperature metamaterial infrared emitter
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2017
AuthorsX Liu, and WJ Padilla
JournalOptica
Volume4
Issue4
Start Page430
Pagination430 - 433
Date Published04/2017
Abstract

The marriage of micro/nanoelectromechanical systems with metamaterials offers a viable route to achieving reconfigurable devices, which control the emission of energy. Here we propose and demonstrate the idea of a metamaterial microelectromechanical system (MEMS) capable of tailoring the energy emitted from a surface, without changing the temperature, but, instead, only altering the spectral emissivity. Our metamaterial achieves a range of emissivities equivalent to a nearly 20°C temperature change when viewed with a thermal infrared camera. We tessellate a surface with individually reconfigurable MEMS metamaterial pixels, thus realizing a spatiotemporal emitter capable of displaying thermal infrared patterns up to 110 kHz. Our results may be scaled to nearly any sub-optical range of the electromagnetic spectrum, and validate the potential of MEMS metamaterials to operate as reconfigurable multifunctional devices with unprecedented energy control capabilities.

DOI10.1364/OPTICA.4.000430
Short TitleOptica