Reconfigurable room temperature metamaterial infrared emitter

The marriage of micro/nanoelectromechanical systems with metamaterials offers a viable route to achieving reconfigurable devices, which control the emission of energy. Here we propose and demonstrate the idea of a metamaterial microelectromechanical system (MEMS) capable of tailoring the energy emitted from a surface, without changing the temperature, but, instead, only altering the spectral emissivity. Our metamaterial achieves a range of emissivities equivalent to a nearly 20°C temperature change when viewed with a thermal infrared camera. We tessellate a surface with individually reconfigurable MEMS metamaterial pixels, thus realizing a spatiotemporal emitter capable of displaying thermal infrared patterns up to 110 kHz. Our results may be scaled to nearly any sub-optical range of the electromagnetic spectrum, and validate the potential of MEMS metamaterials to operate as reconfigurable multifunctional devices with unprecedented energy control capabilities.

Duke Scholars

Author Willie John Padilla Electrical and Computer Engineering