Abnormal beam steering with kirigami reconfigurable metasurfaces
Guobang Jiang, Yingying Wang, Ziyu Zhang, Weikang Pan, Yizhen Chen, Yang Wang, Xiangzhong Chen, Enming Song, Gaoshan Huang, Qiong He, Shulin Sun, Jizhai Cui, Lei Zhou, Yongfeng Mei
Abstract
Dynamically controlling electromagnetic waves at will is highly desired in many applications, but most previously realized mechanically reconfigurable metasurfaces are of restricted wave-control capabilities due to the limited tuning ranges of structural properties (e.g., lattice constant or meta-atoms). Here, we present mechanically reconfigurable metasurfaces in which both lattice constants and local reflection phases of constitutional meta-atoms can be synchronously controlled based on the kirigami rotation transformation, thereby exhibiting extended tuning ranges and thus wave-control capabilities. In particular, such metasurfaces can exhibit continuously varied and even re-formed reflection-phase profiles along with the kirigami rotation transformation, serving as ideal platforms to achieve reconfigurable beam steering in pre-designed manners. Using this concept, we design and fabricate two kirigami metasurfaces, working as a beam flipper and as a beam splitter for microwaves, respectively, and experimentally characterize their wave-manipulation functionalities. Experimental results are in good agreement with full-wave simulations. The proposed idea is so general that it can be applied to realize reconfigurable metasurfaces with different materials/configurations or in high frequency regimes, for controlling electromagnetic waves and other classical waves (e.g., acoustic waves). Jiang et al. propose a kirigami-based, mechanically reconfigurable metasurface that utilizes simple uniform stretching to achieve unexpected and dynamic beam steering functions. This unique approach modifies the geometric phase and lattice constant synchronously based on the rotation of anisotropic meta-atoms, exhibiting extended degree of freedom and wave-tuning ranges.