Conformable optical coatings with epsilon near zero response

Abstract

We design and experimentally demonstrate an optical free-standing and low-loss metamaterial showing a vanishing effective permittivity. The material consists of a stack of subwavelength polymer and silver nanolayers. We show that the material can withstand large mechanical deformations preserving its own optical properties with high reversibility and repeatability and that it can conform to targets with irregular surfaces, with a radius of curvature of the order of few microns. This material can be used to create an artificial metamaterial skin for nonflat materials and devices that cannot be processed directly for practical applications in field enhancement, wavefront shaping, all-optical modulation, and optical sensing.