5. Photonic Metamaterials and Metadevices

Photonic metamaterials are artificially engineered materials containing nanostructures that interact with light, mainly covering infrared or visible wavelengths. Photonic metamaterials have revolutionarily altered the way for designing various optical metadevices with utilization of novel, spatially varying architectures of metamaterials where the electromagnetic properties of every position are carefully prescribed. They bring the promise of creating entirely new prospects for controlling and manipulating photons and provide potential benefits in related fields including optical sensing, miniature antennae, novel waveguides, subwavelength imaging, nanoscale photolithography, and photonic circuits. Compared with microwave and THz metamaterials, photonic metamaterials are generally more difficult to realize, but substantial progress in this area has been achieved. Current research and development are focusing on design optimization, new phenomena exploration, and metadevices postulation. This chapter will review the progress on photonic metamaterials and metadevices, covering nanoscale photonic crystals, transformation optics, light emission and absorption control, as well as hyperbolic, optical dielectric, superconducting and quantum, and nanomechanical photonic metamaterials.