PERSPECTIVES

to infect humans, new diagnostic tools will
place researchers in a better position to pro-
vide advance warning that could benefit any
subsequent public health response.
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10.1126/science.1236958

MATERIALS SCIENCE

A class of metamaterials designed with low

Pursuing Near-Zero Response permittivity provides a platform for developing
optical devices with unconventional properties.
Nader Engheta

Downloaded from http://science.sciencemag.org/ on January 14, 2018

I
n most wave phenomena, the inter-
play between the spatial and tempo-
ral features of a wave is influenced by
the medium in which the wave propagates.
For example, the wavelength λ (a spatial
feature) and the frequency f (a temporal
feature) of a propagating signal are related
via the phase velocity v of the wave in the
medium as v = f λ. For electromagnetic
waves such as radio, microwave, and opti-
cal waves, the phase velocity is determined
by the medium’s electromagnetic param-
eters of permittivity ε and permeability µ,
which is then given as v = 1 / εµ. When a
wave interacts with a structure embedded in
a host medium, both these temporal and spa-
tial features play key roles in determining
the scattering response of the structure. The
recent development of a class of metamate-
rials in which the electric (ε) and magnetic
(µ) properties can be tuned by design is pro-
viding a platform to engineer optical devices
with unconventional properties.
University of Pennsylvania, Department of Electrical
and Systems Engineering, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
E-mail: engheta@ee.upenn.edu
The frequency of the wave tells us how
the structure’s materials behave, whereas its
wavelength in the host medium is the yard-
stick by which the physical dimensions of
the structure affect the wave-structure inter-
action. These two aspects of interaction are
often closely intertwined because any phys-
ical structure is made of a material and has
certain physical dimensions. Of course, as
we go to higher frequencies, wavelengths
are generally shortened. However, metama-
terials allow the link between the frequency
and the wavelength to be relaxed. If either
the permittivity or the permeability (or both)
can be designed to be relatively low values
near zero, the phase velocity of the wave will
approach a very high value, resulting in long
wavelengths at high frequencies (see the fig-
ure, panel A).
The class of materials in which the rela-
tive permittivity ε attains near-zero values
around a given frequency is called Epsi-
lon-Near-Zero (ENZ) metamaterials (1).
When the operating frequency is near the
plasma frequency of transparent conduct-
ing oxides [e.g., indium-tin-oxide (ITO)] (2),
the real part of the permittivity gets near zero
(whereas its imaginary part is small). Alter-
natively, metamaterials can be designed to
achieve effective permittivity near zero by
mixing constituent materials with permittiv-
ity-positive (oxides) and permittivity-nega-
tive (metal) structures, such as the stacks of
thin layers of pairs of such structures (see
the figure, panel B). Another way to imitate
propagation in an ENZ medium is to exploit
the structural dispersion of metal-clad wave-
guides near their cut-off frequencies (3, 4).
ENZ metamaterials offer unprecedented
wave properties. One such property is the
phenomenon of supercoupling (1), in which
the wave in one waveguide can efficiently
tunnel through a very narrow, ENZ-filled
channel to reach another waveguide, regard-
less of the channel’s length, shape, bend-
ing and twisting, and the relative orienta-
tion of the two waveguides (see the figure,
panel C). Counterintuitively, the narrower
the channel’s height, the better the tunnel-
ing. The consequence of this unusual tunnel-
ing is threefold: (i) because the energy has
to squeeze through the narrow channel with
no reflection, the wave intensity is enhanced
along the entire narrow channel, and such

A ε > > ε0 B ε<0 ε<0 ε<0 ε<0 C

ε>0

0⯝ε

ε>0 ε⯝0
ε>0 ε>0 ε>0 ε>0

Features of ENZ metamaterials. (A) The wavelength can be “stretched” (C) Supercoupling phenomenon in ENZ-filled ultranarrow channels between two
within materials with low permittivity, whereas for high permittivity it is com- similar, but arbitrarily oriented, waveguides, in which an efficient tunneling
pressed. (B) A judicious mixture of a permittivity-positive and a permittivity- occurs regardless of the length, shape, bending, and twisting of the ultranar-
negative constituent structure may provide an effectively ENZ metamaterial. row channel.

286 19 APRIL 2013 VOL 340 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org

Published by AAAS

enhancement is inversely proportional to the
ratio of the channel’s height to the port wave-
guide’s height; (ii) because the wavelength in
the ENZ region is very long due to the low
value of permittivity, the enhanced intensity
maintains an approximately uniform phase
along the entire channel’s length; and (iii)
this enhancement and its uniformity along
the channel are essentially independent of the
length, shape, and bending of the channel.
Because of its high wave intensity enhance-
ment over an extended region, this phenom-
enon has been studied for boosting nonlinear
effects (5) and second-harmonic generation
and has also been used for enhancing the pho-
ton density of state for emitters embedded in
such ENZ structures (6, 7). This platform
has also been proposed for sensing a defect
in the channel (8), thus opening the possibil-
ity for fluidic- and biosensing applications.
The supercoupling concept has now been
extended to other wave phenomena, such as
acoustic and matter waves (9).
Because the permittivity of these materi-
als is near zero, the electric displacement vec-
tor may also be near zero for a finite electric
field. Therefore, an ENZ material can be used
as a platform for “shielding” the displace-
ment current, just as a dielectric insulator
may shield the conduction current in a metal-
lic wire (10, 11).
ENZ structures may provide a use-
ful mechanism for enhancing the effects of
ECOLOGY
Fire in the Ocean
C. A. Masiello1 and P. Louchouarn 2, 3
O
ne of the great challenges of mod-
ern organic geochemistry is the
determination of the chemical
composition of Earth’s largest active car-
bon pools: marine sediments, soils, and
dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in both
marine and terrestrial systems. Together
these reservoirs are much larger than the
atmospheric CO2 pool, and they exchange
carbon with the atmosphere, making them
potential CO2 sources or sinks in a changing
climate. Rivers play a central role in the car-
bon exchange between all these reservoirs.
1
Department of Earth Science, Rice University, 6100 Main
Street, MS 126, Houston, TX 77005, USA. 2Department of
Marine Science, Texas A&M University at Galveston, Galves-
ton, TX 77553, USA. 3Department of Oceanography, Texas
A&M University, College Station, TX 77853, USA. E-mail:
masiello@rice.edu
www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 340 19 APRIL 2013
nonreciprocity and time-reversal symme-
try breaking, when they are combined with
magneto-optical materials. Such composites
may favorably change the balance between
the parameter of the magneto-optical activ-
ity and the dielectric parameters, causing pro-
nounced nonreciprocal effects such as wave
isolation based on circular polarization and
Faraday rotation (12).
In conventional media, random displace-
ment of tiny scatterers causes temporal deco-
herence of the scattered signals. Because the
wavelength is increased in ENZ media, ran-
dom fluctuation of scatterers embedded in
these media may lead to decreased incoher-
ence and thus may maintain a more coherent
signal compared with conventional materials.
Finally, when the permeability µ of ENZ
metamaterials is also near zero, the refractive
index of the medium again approaches near-
zero value; however, here the wave imped-
ance is preserved (13–15). In such a scenario,
a large volume of this medium may occupy
appreciable physical space, while still being
tiny from the wave point of view (because
the wavelength has become long). This will
provide an interesting possibility to “stretch”
and “open up” a part of a physical system
by expanding the region and filling it with
index-near-zero medium. Such “opening up”
of the space should not affect the wave inter-
action in the external region but could pro-
vide a platform to insert objects and elements
On page 345 of this issue, Jaffé et al. (1)
shed new light on the chemical composition
of riverine DOC.
Earth’s organic carbon reservoirs are
thought to derive from living terrestrial
and marine organic matter, altered through
biotic and abiotic processes. However, once
organic matter enters soils, rivers, and the
ocean, its chemistry diverges rapidly from
the easily characterized chemistry of fresh
plant matter (2). Fire may be partly respon-
sible for this: Burning alters the chemistry
of biomass, rendering its organic chemi-
cal composition undetectable by standard
analytical techniques. Black carbon (BC),
carbonaceous material altered by fire, can
be transported globally through the atmo-
sphere, rivers, and oceans. Because expo-
sure to fire can reduce biomass decompos-
Published by AAAS
PERSPECTIVES
that ordinarily would not fit in the region with
standard materials. This concept may open
doors to novel spectroscopy of nanostruc-
tures in which the effects of the size of the
object may be decoupled from its material
dispersion.
References and Notes
1. M. G. Silveirinha, N. Engheta, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97,
157403 (2006).
2. A. Boltasseva, H. A. Atwater, Science 331, 290 (2011).
3. B. Edwards, A. Alù, M. E. Young, M. Silveirinha, N. Eng-
heta, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 033903 (2008).
4. I. I. Smolyaninov, V. N. Smolyaninova, A. V. Kildishev, V.
M. Shalaev, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 213901 (2009).
5. C. Argyropoulos, P.-Y. Chen, G. D’Aguanno, N. Engheta,
A. Alu, Phys. Rev. B 85, 045129 (2012).
6. A. Alù, N. Engheta, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 043902 (2009).
7. E. J. R. Vesseur, T. Coenen, H. Caglayan, N. Engheta, A.
Polman, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 013902 (2013).
8. A. Alu, N. Engheta, Phys. Rev. B 78, 045102 (2008).
9. R. Fleury, A. Alu, Appl. Phys. A 109, 781 (2012).
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10. A. Alù, N. Engheta, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 143902 (2009).
11. B. Edwards, N. Engheta, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 193902
(2012).
12. A. R. Davoyan, A. M. Mahmoud, N. Engheta, Opt. Express
21, 3279 (2013).
13. R. W. Ziolkowski, Phys. Rev. E Stat. Nonlin. Soft Matter
Phys. 70, 046608 (2004).
14. N. M. Litchinitser, A. I. Maimistov, I. R. Gabitov, R. Z. Sag-
deev, V. M. Shalaev, Opt. Lett. 33, 2350 (2008).
15. X. Huang, Y. Lai, Z. H. Hang, H. Zheng, C. T. Chan, Nat.
Mater. 10, 582 (2011).
Acknowledgments: This work is supported in part by the
U.S. Office of Naval Research Multidisciplinary University
Research Initiatives grant N00014-10-1-0942.
10.1126/science.1235589
Exposure to fire alters the properties of
dissolved organic carbon in ways that affect
how it decomposes in rivers and in the ocean.
ability, BC becomes an increasing fraction
of carbon pools as they age.
Quantitating BC is analytically hard, and
it has been particularly challenging to mea-
sure dissolved BC (DBC). Jaffé et al. have
applied a novel DBC method to a large suite
of river samples. With this method, which
measures a highly recalcitrant fraction of
DBC that is enriched in condensed poly-
cyclic aromatic units, the authors identified
more than 10% of DOC in rivers as DBC. It
does not detect other DBC fractions such as
levoglucosan (3). This means that the 10%
value reported by Jaffé et al. is a low esti-
mate of fire-altered DOC in rivers.
An even more interesting result is the
strong correlation between DBC and DOC
concentrations in their river samples, indi-
cating that fire does not create a distinct
287
Pursuing Near-Zero Response
Nader Engheta

Science 340 (6130), 286-287.

DOI: 10.1126/science.1235589

Downloaded from http://science.sciencemag.org/ on January 14, 2018

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