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Title | Reconfigurable room temperature metamaterial infrared emitter |
Publication Type | Journal Article |
Year of Publication | 2017 |
Authors | X Liu, and WJ Padilla |
Journal | Optica |
Volume | 4 |
Issue | 4 |
Start Page | 430 |
Pagination | 430 - 433 |
Date Published | 04/2017 |
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. |
DOI | 10.1364/OPTICA.4.000430 |
Short Title | Optica |