Abnormal beam steering with kirigami reconfigurable metasurfaces

Area of Science:

• Metamaterials and Nanophotonics
• Electromagnetics and Wave Phenomena
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Background:

• Controlling electromagnetic waves dynamically is crucial for advanced applications.
• Existing mechanically reconfigurable metasurfaces have limited wave-control capabilities due to restricted tuning ranges of structural properties.
• There is a need for metasurfaces with broader tuning capabilities for versatile wave manipulation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present novel mechanically reconfigurable metasurfaces with extended wave-control capabilities.
• To demonstrate synchronous control of lattice constants and local reflection phases using kirigami.
• To achieve reconfigurable beam steering through continuous phase profile manipulation.

Main Methods:

• Design and fabrication of kirigami-based reconfigurable metasurfaces.
• Utilizing kirigami rotation transformation for synchronous tuning of lattice constants and meta-atom reflection phases.
• Experimental characterization of microwave beam manipulation (flipping and splitting).
• Full-wave simulations for validation.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated extended tuning ranges for metasurface structural properties.
• Achieved continuously varied and re-formed reflection-phase profiles via kirigami rotation.
• Successfully implemented reconfigurable beam steering functionalities.
• Experimental results showed good agreement with full-wave simulations.

Conclusions:

• Kirigami-based reconfigurable metasurfaces offer significantly enhanced wave-control capabilities.
• The proposed concept enables versatile and pre-designed beam steering.
• This approach is general and applicable to various materials, configurations, and frequency regimes, including other classical waves.