Hello, and welcome to the Physics World Weekly
podcast.
This episode explores the science and commercial
applications
of metamaterials.
These are artificial materials that can be engineered
to have useful properties.
Properties that are sometimes
not available
in nature.
Our guests today are Alastair Hibbins
at the University of Exeter
and Claire Danzer at the University of Warwick.
And they both lead the UK
metamaterials
network.
Here they are in conversation
with Physics World's Matin Durrani.
This week on the Physics World weekly podcast,
we're joined by Alastair Hibbins from the University
of Exeter and Claire Danseur from the University
of Warwick, who are 2 joint leads of
the UK
Metamaterials
Network.
So these are artificial three d structures made
up of repeated units,
that can give you all sorts of properties
you wouldn't get with normal materials.
And, Alastair and Claire are are going to
try to help realize the potential of these
materials. So welcome to both of you to
the podcast.
Hello. Thank you. Hello.
So let's start with the basics. So, metamaterials.
So I kind of gave a bit of
an explanation about what they are. And,
Alastair, do you want to remind listeners about
what's what exactly
are metamaterials? I'm sure you can do a
better job than than me in that very
short, attempt.
Yeah. So if you if you want to
describe what a metamaterial is in really just
one sentence, it's it's adding functionality
through structure.
And this is definitely not a brand new
concept.
We've we've we're benefiting nowadays from a lot
of the advances in the physics and the
manufacturing behind it. But metamaterials have you know,
the Romans were were looking into metamaterials
with the and the Egyptians with the the
stained glass windows that we we see in
our famous cathedrals.
In such material,
what you've got is essentially,
plasmonic, what we call plasmonic nanoparticles,
metal nanoparticles
embedded in the glass.
And,
the property we see, the color,
comes down to the size and the shape
of those particles. And that really describes what
a met material is in quite a concise
way. It's dependent, the properties we see or
hear,
And and this all came to it's all
reignited,
just before the turn of the century. So
in the late nineties,
professor Sir John Pendry,
who's
an IOP honorary fellow as well,
He he kind of recrystallized
this this idea.
He was looking at, artificial materials such as
metallic meshes,
and those meshes had properties which were really
different from the the metal that they were
actually naturally comprised of. I know John Pendry
has always been on our short list of
potential people who might win the Nobel Prize.
He's not been lucky yet. But,
Claire, from an applications point of view, why
are they so exciting? Why are missed materials
so exciting?
I think metamaterials
give us an opportunity really to take
materials and material science, that's my background,
and materials can do lots of really fantastic
things, and take out some of the compromises
that we have to make in order to
be able to use them. A material has
a given set of properties.
Metamaterials and metamaterial structuring give us an opportunity
to add a new functionality on top of
that amazing advanced materials properties that we already
have. So you might get a completely new
function
like coking or these sort of properties that
are really, really useful for metamaterial
perspectives.
Or you might get a function without having
a really
heavy,
constrained, really dense,
property of the material that goes with it.
So
it really gives us those materials without compromising
on what they need to be able to
do.
The applications
that we see in in in the network
and in the research that's being done by
members of the network,
a really, really wide range in, and that's
a really exciting thing.
We define metamaterials
in the metamaterials network very broadly,
much more broadly than it's been defined before.
We think about how we can unite and
align research that's being done on similar types
of structures,
whether they're at really large length scales or
really fine length scales. So on the one
hand, we might have a mechanical metamaterial that's
a structural
device that's designed to have really unusual mechanical
properties, like bending and flexing in a way
that its
it bulk constituent materials wouldn't do, or an
auxetic material that's made out of honeycomb structures.
And that might be on a really large
scale. It might be a bridge kind of
scale.
And we go right through to those nanoscale
photonic metamaterials, which are so interesting,
interact with light in really, really unusual ways,
depending on how we've done that really fine
nanostructure.
So that leads to all sorts of applications
in the end. So we have everything from
really exciting innovations in body armor and in
protective
equipment for sports. So if we have auxetic
helmets and protective
devices for contact sports like rugby, that would
be really exciting to have that custom fit
and that customizability,
for the person who's going through that.
In communications, we can start to use our
electromagnetic space much more efficiently.
And we've got a lot of demand for
communication channels. We need to make sure we're
using the frequencies in a discreet and distinct
way.
We can have,
in optical range, we can have artificial color.
Very interesting. Our work being done on coloring
materials to make different kinds of of glitter
and decorative subject the substances.
And in acoustics, there's loads of applications.
We're all plagued a little bit by road
noise and that sort of incidental noise that
fills our world. And metafotils can go a
long way to absorb some of that acoustic
noise and really give us, some interesting,
new approaches to do that without using really
thick heavy materials that could have really bad,
benefit, disadvantages
in other ways. But lots and lots of
applications are really broad spread
of things that people are tackling.
And, Claire, my ears pricked up when you
mentioned cloaking. That's always the thing people associate
with metamaterials. But, Alastair, I mean, have there
been
concrete
commercial applications that have, you know, on the
market yet of metamaterials?
Yes. Yes. There have been.
One example is,
an IOP Business Innovation Award winner, actually, called
Sonnebex.
So as Claire was just saying,
they won the prize,
you know, 6 years ago now. The metamaterials
which can be put up, against the side
of roads to reduce road noise,
and there are other examples I know they
talk a lot about is putting it outside
transform power transformers as well to to to
to obviously reduce the amount of,
that annoying buzz you get from them. But
they're not the the only ones. In fact,
there is some, you know, some news relatively
hot off the press, which is
about Metasonics
that they produce high quality soundproof panels, again,
managing noise.
These actually
allow ventilator crucially actually for their applications because
they're using them for in the built environment
for blinds. They manage noise, but also enable
ventilation at the same time.
And, they've won the one of the 2024
IOP Business Awards as well, which is really,
really pleasing to hear.
You know, I I was just reading that
their their their structure,
blocks noise like, a 60 millimeter piece of
wood does, but it's only a third of
the weight and only 25 millimeters thick. So
that's what that's really, really impressive.
We're also seeing metamaterials talked about by companies
such as high high audio quality products from
KEF, k e f. They use a metamaterial
kind of labyrinth structure as part of the
baffle behind the main loudspeaker
in in their high end devices.
There's a very nice animation of metamaterials on
on their website,
that obviously listeners might want to go and
have a look at if they want to
see a metamaterial in action.
And recently, there's,
a company, a spin out,
called Meta Helios,
and then what what they're doing is innovating,
on chip pixelated cameras, which are hyperspectral,
so they they're they're multi wavelength,
and they're also polarization
sensitive as well. And that's for the space
sector and also for the defense sector as
well.
I guess perhaps the most famous one, unfortunately,
not necessarily a UK intervention, is Meta Lens.
So these are flat,
conformal lenses, which are incredibly useful,
in our mobile phone technologies because they enable
an amazing optical performance in a very compact
device. And
they are now you'll find them in Apple
Phones and in Samsung Phones, and they're coming
to Google Phone, Android Phones as well,
particularly using biometric ideas as well and involved
in the kind of the face ID technologies.
I think, you know, I touched on there
that, you know, not all of these companies,
of course, are coming from the UK, and
it's it's it's
it's interesting to hear how well the US
is doing compared to us.
There are companies such as Kymeta,
Lumotive, EchoDyne, and Pivotal Comware,
in the in the US who've received huge
amount of startup funding and venture funding,
and and are now doing really well. So
it does show what metamaterials
can offer in terms of, making money and
selling products. Clameta, for example, making metamaterial based
antennas and Lumotive
involved in solid state,
lidar systems. So these are the lidar systems
you use in autonomous vehicles and drones and
so on,
for ranging, applications.
So quite a really wide ranging and impressive,
number of applications.
And which kind of brings me on to
the metamaterials network, which, Claire, I think we've
it's been set up deliberately to sort of
help encourage this kind of commercialization. So what
what are the aims of
the metamaterials network?
Yeah. So it's it's certainly one of our
aims and really important one to make sure
that we we,
capitalise on all the work that's being done
in the UK on metamaterials.
The metamaterials network at the moment is a
EPSRC network plus. But we had an original
award in 2021, so we have been going
for a little while now,
as a network. You know, we were funded
by UKRI
and DSTL.
And since those early days, through
lots of talking, lots of communication between different
people from different areas, we've now grown to
a community of about 900 numbers,
which is made up of people from across
the UK and some from abroad, largely dominated
by UK academics,
some industry, and some overseas academics.
And we're really set up to be as
as broad as possible in our approach to
metamaterials.
But to provide that one coherent single source
of access to the community. We try and
represent the whole community.
So that we've got that one call in
place to to come to, to help to
generate,
support for the current generation of academics, the
next generation of academics. We want to see
more people coming through into this field and
seeing it as a good place to work.
And also to support that start for commercialization,
startups, the industry getting engaged, and government giving
us the support to to help us do
that beyond our sort of traditional boundaries.
So the way the network works is we've
got our application areas that we already sort
of talked about. We've got,
groups who focus on acoustic metamaterials, microwave metamaterials,
photonic breath materials.
But we've also organised ourselves around 4 key
challenge areas.
And these challenge areas cross cut across lots
of different areas of metamaterials research.
And they're in manufacturing,
which is one I'm particularly interested in,
space and aviation,
health and sustainability.
One of our really core aims of the
meta tools network plus years that we've just
started
is to try and develop more research programs
in these areas so that we're making sure
that metamaterials
is giving that positive contribution to
challengers, which really hit on lots of important
national and global priorities, you know. If we're
going to start making new materials, new metamaterials,
let's make them good for sustainability. Let's make
them great for healthcare and space and these
really important challenges. And let's make sure we
can actually make them. We've got the manufacturing
capability and techniques to be able to do
that.
So
that's a really large way in which we
work.
We use that group of people to try
and tackle,
that representation
to the people who make the decisions,
to promote the research and development that we're
doing in the UK in meta materials. And
meta as we've already mentioned, meta tools
is really what came from the UK. It
came from a lot of work of John
Pendry, and we should we should take advantage
of that.
We also, as a network plus,
are lucky enough to have some funding that
we can distribute. So we now have pipeline
funding. We've just opened our 1st round, which
we can use to help explore
a pilot or exploratory project or something that's
really pushing the research to a better outcome,
that can help develop new areas for the
UK,
new activities that are strategically important, and start
to build some of those larger bids. That
really helps us be able to shape the
field, shape that research landscape,
and help make those arguments for developing things
like metrosil's infrastructure, large scale manufacturing, and large
scale facilities for testing.
So we also have a bit of a
remit to look at talent and skills. Like
I already said, encouraging new people into the
field, making sure we're we're drawing people into
this area and have have interest in in
working on this, on these, interesting materials.
And
increasingly, as we move towards commercialization,
to
develop ways that we can standardize and regulate
mass materials. Yeah. We already talked about the
definition of mass materials that we think should
be fairly broad.
It does still need to be quite precise.
And,
the metamaterials that we produce need to fit
those
standards and regulation frameworks
in order to be supported
and move through to market.
So we're really all about both supporting
the fundamentals,
supporting the discovery science, making sure that that's
really well represented in the UK where it
is so strong.
But also then driving that adoption into the
wider economy and driving the commercialization,
as we go forward.
And one of the one of the one
of the really big things we've done, of
course, is to,
crowdsource the the metamaterial definition because it's been
a topic of some debate over the last
few years.
And Claire's put a lot of effort into
into working that with with the community. It's
a metamaterial is a 3 d structure with
a response or function
due to collective effects of meta atom elements
that is not possible to achieve conventionally
with any individual constituent material.
And the amount of work that went into
defining that and talking with the community and
lots of debate about, you know, what should
be in, what should be out.
But I think we've come up with a
really nice definition there that that that that
that will be there, is gonna be there
for many years to come, which I think
is one of our seems a little bit
trivial, but it's it's one of our great
achievements.
It sounds like that definition will be on
the school syllabus is one day. I can
imagine that being exam question. But in terms
of the commercialization,
are there any specific challenges,
Claire, in commercializing these materials? I can imagine,
I can imagine there must be.
Yep. There certainly are. I think any commercializing
any new idea from science is is always
a challenge.
And,
we're certainly no exception to that.
I think one particular issue with met materials
is the manufacturing of them.
It's I could I could say that's always
my interest. It is always my interest. But
I think if we are going to have
commercial products, we need to make sure we're
making metamaterials by ways that can be made
in industry, can be made in the suitable
volumes, suitable batch sizes.
An awful lot of metamaterials
in the in the research lab are made
by,
3 d printing, by sticking and gluing things
together, by manual assembly, which is great because
it shows that the physics is there. It
proves that we can do something really, really
interesting.
But that's not how you're gonna make it
in fact, this. So we need to go
through a stage where we take all this
fundamental physics and we need the input from
those physicists because we're gonna have to tweak
the designs. And
design for manufacturer is a very serious concern
here. But we need to make sure the
designs fit something you can actually make with
a scalable technique.
We need to go through that stage of
building up these these new techniques for manufacturing,
which I think is a really exciting stage
to be at, to be fair. So, it's
a good thing.
So that's all about
infrastructure and scale up. So, in order to
realize that, we need to make sure that
we've got funding in place to be able
to fund those large investments.
We need large scale infrastructure, not just lab
scale infrastructure, to be able to realize that
scale up, activity.
And of course, we need, you know, talented
skilled workers to be able to do that
work and run those things through,
who might well need to be
people who are already working in manufacturing industries
and related industries,
and make sure we develop the talent that's
needed to make sure that this this happens.
I already mentioned regulation and standardization.
It's a really important thing to make sure
it comes through. And it's also a question
of intellectual property.
And how do we manage that intellectual property
relationship when things have been coming through collaborative
research?
If we make too many barriers for companies
wanting to work on, things that were originated
in universities, then they're gonna give up and
not bother trying. So, making sure we've got
those those relationships right,
those agreements right, and get the funding in
place will help us with with overcoming those
commercialization
barriers, I think. And now, Alastair, I'm hoping
you're gonna get your,
dare I say, your metamaterial crystal ball out,
if such a thing exists and kind of
can you sort of paint a picture of
where metamaterials will be, let's say, a decade
from now? Is there one, you know, burgeoning
area that, you know, you know, will transform
life over the next 10 years? I think
if we're gonna really achieve what we what
MET materials the potential of MET MET materials
and what we do in the academic community,
if we're really gonna exploit that fully,
then in 10 years' time, what would have
happened is that we would have, and this
is a big ambition, we would have been
funded as a national program in the same
similar kind of way to quantum technology and
and so on. Because
if if we've done that, then we can
we can relax and and and understand that,
you know, the true value of metamaterials would
have been appreciated.
You know,
defense has often been one of the the
leaders in in funding metamaterials because of the
the ways that it helps communications and and
and and so on.
But
we we want to see that the the
broader
industry community
adopts metamaterials in a much bigger way. And
as materials without boundaries,
we want to see metamaterials embedded in everyday
devices.
You know, what they do is offering they
offer game changing control of essentially just the
way that energy and
information
interacts with the world around us.
I know Claire's mentioned some of the examples
already, but that can be a huge range
of things. I mean, what so those big
those big areas that we really hope to
see metamaterials in could be in health and
things like artificial limbs
or in medical imaging for for diagnosis.
In energy, you know, there's a such a
huge challenge over reducing the use of rare
earth and critical minerals. Metamaterials can provide alternatives
there as well as lower carbon alternatives, of
course.
And in space and aerospace, we need incredibly
lightweight but really strong materials, blast resistant materials
for satellites and so on, satellite communications.
And we need to develop more capacity to
send information around the world.
So we're really looking. We're really hoping that
metamaterials are gonna
unlock the potential for societal and economic impact.
And as we said before,
and one of our big desires is that
we we as physicists and material scientists, we
we still want to do the the the
work that we love,
but we need to be showing that there's
a huge impact to society and the economy
from what meta materials offer. So it's so
important to us that we see that take
up over the next few years. I mean,
that brings us nicely onto the Pathfinder project,
which you're working on with the Institute of
Physics.
Alastair, do you wanna tell us about that
project and what that what that hopes to
do?
Yeah. Well, the IOP is, as I'm sure
you know, has a long history of shaping
the debate on some of the most important
physics topics to the UK and Ireland,
and the community
involved,
often,
you know, really trying to embed and influence
and and drive impact.
And what this means is,
the IOP are looking to develop an ongoing
program of of high impact projects, and and
those are,
at the moment, they're they're being informed by
the community priorities.
So, actually, it's the first time that the
IOP has run an open process to kind
of, understand what those priorities are.
The IOP's first impact projects,
involve the, 2,500,000,000
pound National Quantum Technology Strategy
and also the 1,000,000,000 pound National Semiconductor Strategy.
The first phase of the IP is green
economy project,
and articulated
the, you know, physics's key role in in
in the energy transition.
So as so at the moment, what we're
working with and collaborating with IOP on our
project is is the commercialization
and exploitation of natural materials for applications
across ICT, sustainability,
health, defense, and security.
So it's it's, you know, not not not
a not a small problem at all to
to try to to take forward. But that
that's that's that's the project that we're working
on, in collaboration with the IOP at the
moment.
Brilliant. And before we go, Claire, you're gonna
tell us about, the showcase event that you've
got coming up on 6th December. So what's
what's that about? And what's what's it gonna
do?
So this is actually our 3rd industry showcase.
We run this as an annual event,
for the last 3 years.
And it's always been called met materials in
the real world in an attempt to,
really drive the idea that met materials do
have applications in the real world, and lots
of them.
So previously, we've organized
these showcases at NPL, out in Teddington. And
we went to the VRAG Centre For Materials
Research in Leeds last year. This year, we've
decided to, partly because of the Pathfinder project,
we've decided to organise the industry showcase in
collaboration with the Institute of Physics. And we'll
be at the IOP HQ on the 6th
December
for our event. We're gathering lots of non
academics for this one.
While we're primarily an academics
network, we want lots of people there who
aren't academics. So we normally aim for at
least 50% of attendees not being academics.
And we're going to have a panel discussion
to talk to people from industry and policy
backgrounds about what the barriers to commercialization are.
You know, I've told you what I think
they are. I want to hear from them
as well, what those barriers are and how
we might overcome them.
We're going to have various demonstrators of methods
or technologies,
and lots of short snappy presentations from academics
and industrialists
who are going to talk to us about
their new innovations
and the challenges that they're trying to to,
overcome.
So we're really seeking to generate new collaborations
that we can then drive forward for support
in whatever mechanism that is. That could be
our pump priming. It could be another way,
to to generate those collaborations.
And, of course, we're going to be presenting
our initial findings from our Impact Project Pathfinder
project with the IOP
and looking for the community engagement that we
need to drive that forwards in the coming
year as we move forward to to really
drive towards that mass materials commercialization.
We're going to need to bring people along
for the ride. So we'll be reporting on
some of the facts and figures that we've
been gathering
as part of our our impact pathfinder work.
We've really been trying to find evidence and
understand what the current landscape is, both in
metamaterials in the UK and elsewhere,
and then really drive that, promotion of these
messages
and make sure that we're really taking advantage
of them in the year to come. And
we've really engaged with some new sectors as
well. I think it's worth highlighting as well
at this point, as part of this huge
response we've had to the, registration for the
event this year. And I think that's, you
know, Bowdoin making a very exciting year ahead
for the Metamaterials
Network in in 2025,
obviously, working with the IOP on on the
in the Impact project.
So we're we're gonna be continue working across
our challenge areas and in and involving as
many new sectors as we can to really
drive down into the depths of metamaterial work
across the UK.
And we're, you know, and one of the
big things that is likely to happen in
the next few months is we're likely to
hit a1000
members of of our of our of our
network.
So, we obviously welcome anyone to to come
along to the event. Let us know via
the website.
But we'll run a 2020
25 event as well, so there's that to
look forward to. But we will have a
little celebration when we hit that a thousand
marker on our our membership list as well.
And, of course, you can sign up
via, the website, which is, metamaterials.network.
Very good. And, well, let's hope this time
year, we who knows? We might be celebrating
John Pendry winning a Nobel Prize because that's
always been on our Physics World shortlist of
people who might win. It didn't he didn't
win this year, but let's see.
So thanks very much, Alastair.
Thanks, Claire. Brilliant to, have you on the
podcast, and good luck with the events. Thank
you.
That was Claire Danzer
and Alastair Hibbins
in conversation
with Physics World's Mateen Durrani.
Thanks to all 3 for a fascinating conversation
about metamaterials.
And a special thanks to our producer, Fred
Ailes.
We'll be back again next week when we
will unveil the physics world top 10 breakthroughs
of 2024.
See you then.