Metamaterials: A New Direction in Materials Science

A. A. Zhilin and M. P. Shepilov*

Scientific Research and Technological Institute of Optical Materials Science, All-Russia Science Center
“S. I. Vavilov State Optical Institute,” ul. Babushkina 36, St. Petersburg, 192171 Russia

*e-mail: shep@goi.ru, m.shep@mail.ru

Received February 10, 2010

Abstract—A review is presented of materials science of metamaterials, i.e., the area of research that has been
extensively developed over the last decade. Metamaterials are artificial materials consisting of structural ele-
ments, whose type and mutual arrangement can be specified during the fabrication. The development of
metamaterials was associated initially with the idea of the design of electromagnetic media with a negative
refractive index and, more recently, with the prospect for fabrication of superlenses, invisible objects, and other
optical devices. As a result, there appeared a new branch of materials science and an intimately related new
branch of optics—transformation optics. This review has discussed the main directions of research in this field
and problems encountered in this way. It is noted that metamaterials cannot be designed without invoking the
most modern tools for performing numerical simulation and that their implementation requires the use of high-
level technologies. The idea of metamaterials is important not only for optics and electromagnetism but also for
acoustics.

Key words: metamaterials, negative refractive index, superlens, invisibility cloaks, transformation optics,
nanostructuring

DOI: 10.1134/S1087659610050019

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