IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 35

Matter made to order
With laser-sculpted atoms, researchers can build better metamaterials
By Joachim Fischer, michael Thiel & marTin Wegener

or a century or more, nearly all tech-
nological advances have depended
on our ability to produce and ma-
nipulate the vast variety of materials
that nature has given us. Nowhere
is that dependence more evident
than in the field of electronics. From
a smorgasbord of semiconductors,
polymers, and metals, we've been
able to create a dazzling array of cir-
cuitry that now underpins pretty
much every aspect of modern life.
So now imagine what we could do if we
weren't limited to the materials found in nature.
Researchers have long believed that it would some-
day be possible to produce artificial materials, or
"metamaterials," and that they would bring about
some stunning, otherworldly technologies-the sort
that have figured in science fiction tales for years.
These innovations include invisibility cloaks that
could mask the presence of objects or their electro-
magnetic signatures, "unfeelability cloaks" that
could mechanically mask the tactile feel of an

object, superlenses that could resolve features
too small to be seen with ordinary microscope
lenses, and power absorbers that could capture
essentially all of the sunlight hitting a solar cell.
To achieve these advances we'll need better meta-
materials, and those are on the way. Metamaterials
are made up of "meta-atoms"-small two- or three-
dimensional structures made of polymer, dielec-
tric material, or metal. When these structures are
arranged in regular, repeating crystals, they can
be used to manipulate electromagnetic radiation
in new ways. Ultimately, the capabilities of a meta-
material are determined by the size, shape, and
quality of these structures. And the technology to
fabricate meta-atoms has recently turned a corner.
Over the past few years, research groups around
the world have succeeded in developing a way to
draw meta-atoms using lasers. The resulting struc-
tures can now take on nearly any shape and be
stacked in three dimensions in dense, crystal-like
arrangements. What's more, they can be made small
enough to exhibit unique mechanical and thermal
properties and to alter the flow of light in a range of

made from scratch: Lasers were used to draw the micrometer-scale structures in these metamaterials.
Pictured clockwise from top left are a bichiral photonic crystal [top view], a photonic quasicrystal, a bichiral
photonic crystal [oblique view], and a pentamode metamaterial.

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum February, 2014

IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - Cover1
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - Cover2
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 1
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 2
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IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 72
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - Cover3
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - Cover4
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