State of the Art on Metamaterials and their Different Domain of Application

Abstract

Metamaterials are a class of artificially engineered structures designed to manipulate electromagnetic, acoustic, and elastic waves in ways not possible with conventional materials. Their unique properties, such as the negative refractive index, arise not from their chemical composition but from their carefully designed subwavelength architecture. This capability has unlocked a vast spectrum of applications across diverse domains, including next-generation telecommunications, super-resolution imaging, acoustic cloaking, targeted medical therapies, and efficient energy harvesting. Recent research trends are advancing the field towards tunable and reconfigurable designs, practical two-dimensional metasurfaces, and the exploration of topological metamaterials for robust waveguiding, largely enabled by advances in additive manufacturing. However, challenges remain in fabrication precision, energy loss, and scalability for mass production. This review provides a state-of-the-art overview of metamaterials, covering their fundamental principles, classifications, and transformative applications, while also discussing current challenges and future perspectives toward their integration into real-world systems and commercial devices.