Open to everyone!
Title: Arbitrary Manipulation of Electromagnetic Waves Through Engineered Materials: An Enabling Technology for Transformative RF/Optical Devices
Abstract: Advances in design and manufacturing (e.g., 3D printing, nanofabrication) are enabling the ability to realize transformative structures that achieve electromagnetic functionalities not possible with conventional devices. Some of the most interesting structures being developed are based on metasurfaces comprised of sub-wavelength unit cells intelligently patterned to locally manipulate an electromagnetic/optical wavefront in a desired fashion. Designers have traditionally employed simple canonical structures (e.g., loaded-dipoles, v-antennas, split-ring resonators, dielectric cylinders/pillars) to synthesize metasurfaces that realize a desired functionality. However, metadevices based on these canonical structures do not always achieve optimal performance especially when broadband and/or wide field-of-view functionality is desired. Additionally, different material combinations as well as fabrication effects and tolerances can make the unit cell topology selection difficult. Therefore, the ability to generate a diverse set of unintuitive metasurface unit cells and evaluate their electromagnetic/optical behaviors for achieving a specific functionality is highly desirable [S. D. Campbell, D. Sell, R. P. Jenkins, E. B. Whiting, J. A. Fan, and D. H. Werner, Optical Materials Express, 9, 1842-1863, (2019)]. Moreover, doing so in an efficient and intelligent manner is extremely important in order to maintain a tractable inverse-design process. In this presentation, an overview of the metasurface inverse-design techniques developed by my research group will be presented. In addition, some transformative application examples for the inverse-design of both RF (e.g., metamaterial-enabled antennas) and optical metadevices will be highlighted including reconfigurable/tunable systems.
About the Speaker: Dr. Douglas H. Werner received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and the M.A. degree in mathematics from the Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), University Park, in 1983, 1985, 1989, and 1986, respectively. He holds the John L. and Genevieve H. McCain Chair Professorship in the Pennsylvania State University Department of Electrical Engineering. He is the director of the Computational Electromagnetics and Antennas Research Lab (CEARL: http://cearl.ee.psu.edu/) as well as a faculty member of the Materials Research Institute (MRI: https://www.mri.psu.edu/) at Penn State. Prof. Werner was presented with the 1993 Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES) Best Paper Award and was also the recipient of a 1993 International Union of Radio Science (URSI) Young Scientist Award. In 1994, Prof. Werner received the Pennsylvania State University Applied Research Laboratory Outstanding Publication Award. He was a co-author (with one of his graduate students) of a paper published in the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation which received the 2006 R. W. P. King Award. He received the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Edward E. Altshuler Prize Paper Award and the Harold A. Wheeler Applications Prize Paper Award in 2011 and 2014 respectively. In 2018, he received the DoD Ordnance Technology Consortium (DOTC) Outstanding Technical Achievement Award. He also received the 2015 ACES Technical Achievement Award, the 2019 ACES Computational Electromagnetics Award, the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society 2019 Chen-To Tai Distinguished Educator Award and 2023 John Kraus Antenna Award. He was the recipient of a College of Engineering PSES Outstanding Research Award and Outstanding Teaching Award in March 2000 and March 2002, respectively. He was also presented with an IEEE Central Pennsylvania Section Millennium Medal. In March 2009, he received the PSES Premier Research Award. He is a Fellow of 8 professional societies including IEEE, IET, NAI, OPTICA, SPIE, ACES, AAIA, and the PIER Electromagnetics Academy. He is also a Senior Member of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI).
Read More