Tailoring Electromagnetic Waves from RF to the IR: Theory and Applications

This talk presents novel approaches to manipulate electromagnetic waves and exploit them in practical applications. The first part of the talk will be dedicated to discuss the possibilities enabled by time-modulation to implement a wide variety of low-loss nonreciprocal microwave components exhibiting fascinating functionalities, including (i) phased-array antennas that independently control their transmission/reception radiation patterns at the same operation frequency; (ii) gradient meta-surfaces able to arbitrarily manipulate beams propagating in free-space; (iii) bandpass filters that behave as isolators on one direction of the wave propagation; and (iv) power dividers and Yagi-Uda planar antennas, among other devices.

The second part of the talk will focus on the use of RF microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) for infrared sensing. Specifically, I will describe our latest effort to merge RF MEMS devices with ultra-thin meta-surfaces to detect IR waves with desired wavelengths while providing ultralow noise and high responsivity at room temperature.