Transient and Flexible Hyperbolic Metamaterials on Freeform Surfaces

Transient technology is deemed as a paramount breakthrough for its particular functionality that can be implemented at a specific time and then totally dissolved. Hyperbolic metamaterials (HMMs) with high wave-vector modes for negative refraction or with high photonic density of states to robustly enhance the quantum transformation efficiency represent one of the emerging key elements for generating not-yet realized optoelectronics devices. However, HMMs has not been explored for implementing in transient technology. Here we show the first attempt to integrate transient technology with HMMs, i.e., transient HMMs, composed of multilayers of water-soluble and bio-compatible polymer and metal. We demonstrate that our newly designed transient HMMs can also possess high-k modes and high photonic density of states, which enables to dramatically enhance the light emitter covered on top of HMMs. We show that these transient HMMs devices loss their functionalities after immersing into deionized water within 5 min. Moreover, when the transient HMMs are integrated with a flexible substrate, the device exhibits an excellent mechanical stability for more than 3000 bending cycles. We anticipate that the transient HMMs developed here can serve as a versatile platform to advance transient technology for a wide range of application, including solid state lighting, optical communication, and wearable optoelectronic devices, etc.