Applied Sciences. Special Issue

Abstract

Metamaterials have, in the last few decades, inspired scientists and engineers to think about waves beyond traditional constraints imposed by materials in which they propagate, conceiving new functionalities, such as subwavelength imaging, invisibility cloaking and broadband ultraslow light. While mainly for ease of fabrication, many of the metamaterials concepts have initially been demonstrated at longer wavelengths and for microwaves, metamaterials have subsequently moved to photonic frequencies and the nanoscale. At the same time, metamaterials are recently embedding new quantum materials such as graphene, dielectric nanostructures and, as metasurfaces, surface geometries and surface waves while also embracing new functionalities such as nonlinearity, quantum gain and strong light-matter coupling. This Special Issue, "Photonic Metamaterials" of Applied Sciences is devoted to exhibiting the current state of the art of the dynamic and vibrant field of photonic metamaterials reaching across various disciplines, suggesting exciting applications in chemistry, material science, biology, medicine, and engineering. It will illuminate recent advances in the wider photonic metamaterials field, such as (to mention a few) active metamaterials and metasurfaces, self-organized nanoplasmonic metamaterials, graphene metamaterials, metamaterials with negative or vanishing refractive index and topological metamaterials facilitating ultraslow broadband waves on the nanoscale and novel applications, such as stopped-light lasing.