Exotic effects in nanomechanical metamaterials

The nanomechanical metamaterials offer the possibilities of manipulating exotic electromagnetic properties on demand. Such metamaterial exhibit profound electro-optical, magneto-optical and acousto-optical switching and modulation, optical nonlinearity for modulating light with light, asymmetric transmission, and tunable chirality.The electromagnetic properties of nanomechanical metamaterial structure strongly depend on the spatial arrangement of its building blocks. By constructing metamaterials on elastically deformable scaffolds we can dynamically control the nanoscale spacing among constituent elements across the entire metamaterial array with external stimuli. Based on this approach, we use electrostatic, Lorentz, near field optical forces and sound to drive high-contrast, high-speed active tuning, modulation and switching of photonic metamaterial properties and to deliver exotic electromagnetic properties.We also report a novel approach to the visualization of nanoscale movements of picometre scale Brownian and stimulation movements of the individual building blocks of these functional metamaterials