Scale-up of the manufacturing of optical metamaterials

Recently, a new class of artificial materials known as metamaterials has emerged to manipulate light at the nanoscale. Contrary to natural materials, the physical properties of optical metamaterials are primarily dependent on the material structures rather than their chemical constituents. The structures forming the building blocks of the metamaterials are much smaller than the wavelength of light. By tailoring both effective electric permittivity and the magnetic permeability of metamaterials from a positive to a negative value, one can create negative refractive index metamaterials (NIMs).1 Various 3D NIM structures have been previously reported,2 but they are limited to small-scale samples of less than 1 mm. The unprecedented properties of metamaterials and their potential revolutionary applications, such as superlens imaging,3 remain a challenge to implement in practice due to the lack of innovative large-scale manufacturing methods. As a result, a scalable scheme that enables the large-area fabrication of 3D nanostructures must be developed.