Controlling mass and energy diffusion with metamaterials

Abstract

Diffusion driven by temperature or concentration gradients is a fundamental mechanism of energy and mass transport, which inherently differs from wave propagation in both physical foundations and application prospects. Compared with conventional schemes, metamaterials provide an unprecedented potential for governing diffusion processes, based on emerging theories like the transformation and the scattering cancellation theory, which enormously expanded the original concepts and suggest innovative metamaterial-based devices. We hereby use the term "diffusionics" to generalize these remarkable achievements in various energy (e.g., heat) and mass (e.g., particles and plasmas) diffusion systems. For clarity, we categorize the numerous studies appeared during the last decade by diffusion field (i.e., heat, particles, and plasmas) and discuss them from three different perspectives: the theoretical perspective, to detail how the transformation principle is applied to each diffusion field; the application perspective, to introduce various intriguing metamaterial-based devices, such as cloaks and radiative coolers; and the physics perspective, to connect with concepts of recent concern, such as non-Hermitian topology, nonreciprocal transport, and spatiotemporal modulation. We also discuss the possibility of controlling diffusion processes beyond metamaterials. Finally, we point out several future directions for diffusion metamaterial research, including the integration with artificial intelligence and topology concepts.

This review article has been published in Reviews of Modern Physics, volume 96, 015002 (2024)

References in corpus (37)

• Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Topological Phase Transition in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Quantum Spin Hall Insulator State in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Topological Photonics
• Making Sense of Non-Hermitian Hamiltonians
• Quantized Anomalous Hall Effect in Magnetic Topological Insulators
• Artificial Brownian motors: Controlling transport on the nanoscale
• Electric Multipole Moments, Topological Multipole Moment Pumping, and Chiral Hinge States in Crystalline Insulators
• Topological Acoustics
• Analogs of quantum Hall effect edge states in photonic crystals
• Edge Modes, Degeneracies, and Topological Numbers in Non-Hermitian Systems
• Visualization of higher-order topological insulating phases in two-dimensional dielectric photonic crystals
• Direct observation of corner states in second-order topological photonic crystal slabs
• Weyl Exceptional Rings in a Three-Dimensional Dissipative Cold Atomic Gas
• Topological acoustics
• Cloaking of Matter Waves
• Nonlinear control of PT-symmetry and non-Hermitian topological states
• Statistical physics of crime: A review
• Experimental demonstration of a multiphysics cloak: manipulating heat flux and electric current simultaneously
• Quantized Nonlinear Thouless Pumping
• Engineering Space for Light via Transformation Optics
• Roughness as a Route to the Ultimate Regime of Thermal Convection
• Observation of Acoustic Non-Hermitian Bloch Braids and Associated Topological Phase Transitions
• Optical isolation with nonlinear topological photonics
• Self-focusing and the Talbot effect in conformal transformation optics
• Evidence for Higher order topology in Bi and Bi${}_{0.92}$Sb${}_{0.08}$
• Temperonic Crystal: a superlattice for temperature waves in graphene
• Manipulating local heat flux with different patterns
• Dynamical nonlinear higher-order non-Hermitian skin effects and topological trap-skin phase
• Probability-Density-Based Deep Learning Paradigm for the Fuzzy Design of Functional Metastructures
• Effect of Interfacial Thermal Resistance in Thermal Cloak
• Geometric Heat Pump: Controlling Thermal Transport with Time-dependent Modulations
• Thermal conductivity of micro/nano-porous polymers: Prediction models and applications
• Scattering Cancellation Technique for Acoustic Spinning Objects
• Nonlinear Topological Edge States in a non-Hermitian Array of Optical Waveguides Embedded in an Atomic Gas
• Diffusive Pseudo-Conformal Mapping: Anisotropy-Free Transformation Thermal Media with Perfect Interface Matching
• Topological plasma transport from a diffusion view
• Intrinsic Contribution to Non-linear Thermoelectric Effect

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Topological thermal transport
• Gravitational metamaterials from optical properties of spacetime media
• On-chip omnidirectional electromagnetic-thermal cloak
• Convection-modulated topological edge mode and extended-localized criticality in thermal metamaterials
• Scattering symmetry of diffusive systems
• Emergent non-Hermitian conservation laws at exceptional points
• Neuromorphic heat transport effects in a molecular junction
• Broadband source-surrounded cloak for on-chip antenna radiation pattern protection
• Non-Hermitian physics and topological phenomena in convective thermal metamaterials
• Implementation of ultra-broadband optical null media via space-folding