Metamaterials, hybrid materials made of nanoscale inclusions, can exhibit exotic optical responses, and enable promising applications such as super lenses, optical sensors, and subwavelength imaging. To date, most metamaterials are created using costly and tedious lithography and fabrication techniques, and involve lossy metallic materials with high dissipative losses and heating. Leveraging the expertise in the PI’s group in processing self-assembled, nanoscale oxide-oxide and oxide-metal hybrid thin films in a vertically aligned nanocomposite (VAN) form, the project develops a new class of novel hybrid materials with all ceramic phases, i.e., oxide-nitride VANs, to address the urgent needs of optical metamaterials with low dissipative losses and operating over a broad wavelength range. The education and outreach activities are integrated with the research, including 1) engaging undergraduates in research; 2) multidisciplinary research training for students at both Purdue and national labs; and 3) disseminating research findings to broad audiences by (a) involving underrepresented groups in materials science and engineering, (b) attracting high school students into materials science through laboratory demonstrations, lectures at science festivals and materials art galleries, (c) developing web-based tools for research group websites and inclusion in NanoHUB.
TECHNICAL DETAILS: This project focuses on the design, synthesis, and characterization of metal-free hybrid metamaterials in the VAN thin film form. The goal of the project is to achieve all-ceramic hybrid metamaterials with tunable physical properties, especially optical, magnetic and magneto-optical coupling properties. The specific tasks include: (1) exploring in-plane spontaneous ordering of oxide-nitride hybrid VANs; (2) enabling nanopillar geometry control towards designable hybrid materials with high degree of property tunability; and (3) targeting unprecedented 3D hybrid material designs via multilayer stacking of the VANs. Besides the fundamental design criteria and morphology control approaches developed for the all ceramic hybrid metamaterials, the research offers several technological impacts: (1) metal-free hybrid metamaterial designs are critical for a wide range of optical applications requiring low dissipation losses, high thermal stability, chemical inertness, and multifunctionality; (2) novel hybrid metamaterials may find applications as classical optical interconnects, waveguides, integrated photonics, and all-on-chip optical circuits; and (3) magnetic hybrid metamaterials may be used in high density magnetic data storage, magnetic sensors, and spintronics.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
