Sculpting surfaces to avoid impossible materials

Posted on 2014-05-09 15:11:00

A new elegant method of avoiding unrealistic or unrealisable material values when using spatial transformations has been described in "Removing singular refractive indices with sculpted surfaces", published in Scientific Reports. This method, valid for surface wave devices but not 3D wave devices, adds a simple deformation to the surface to allow a modified, simpler range of material properties to be used to create a device; without that deformation, the material properties remain challenging. This work builds on the work on perfect surface wave cloaks, but differs in some key areas, such as the size of the deformation in relation to the wavelength of the surface wave.

For more information, please visit the QUEST news article.