CANCELLED Pearsall Distinguished Lecture: Soft Meta-Materials: Self-Gauged Assembly, Non-Equilibrium Matters, and 3D Super-Resolution Imaging

Metamaterials are artificial composite structures that lead to many exciting applications beyond nature such as imaging objects below the diffraction limit, optical clocking, sensing and communications. Traditional metamaterials are considered as "hard" materials that structural units cannot be tailored after their formation which limits their material responses and applications. It remains a critical and unsolved problem to design "soft metamaterials" that can spontaneously self-adapt to changes in the source wavelength or the environment.

We explore "soft metamaterials" with building blocks that have a strong propensity for self-assembly/re-assembly. In this regards, the structure units can be artificially evolving during the formation of soft metamaterials. Particularly, we explore the self-feedback mechanism between structures and properties for self-selective assembly of complex metamaterial nanoarchitectures with tailored symmetries. We expand structural design using soft metamaterial approach to achieve isotropic negative index metamaterials and Brownian optical imaging. We also explore approach for realizing bandgap materials that reside far from equilibrium and emerge enslaved to an external drive. Experimental results are providing supports as well as new insights into such new type of soft metamaterials that facilitate self-responsive material applications.

Reception immediately following lecture.