PUBLISHER: Future Markets, Inc. | PRODUCT CODE: 1163412
PUBLISHER: Future Markets, Inc. | PRODUCT CODE: 1163412
Metamaterials is a fast-developing area and will become a multi-billion dollar market within the next decade with product advances in radar and lidar for autonomous vehicles, telecommunications antenna, 6G networks, coatings, vibration damping, wireless charging, noise prevention and more.
Metamaterials are artificially engineered structures with exceptional material properties (acoustic, electrical, magnetic, optical, etc.). They comprise arrays of resonators that manipulate electromagnetic waves or sound in ways not normally found in nature. Possessing customized dielectric properties and tunable responses they allow for excellent flexibility in a range of applications, their use enabling the manipulation of fields and waves at a subwavelength scale.
Initial R&D in metamaterials has focused on cloaking and light manipulation, but the last few years has seen applications development in:
They are key materials for improving the performance and coverage of high-speed, 5G and future 6G networks. Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) based on metamaterials for coating objects in the environment, such as walls, ceilings, mirrors and appliances, will operate as reconfigurable reflectors or transceivers for massive access when equipped with active radio-frequency (RF) elements. The reconfigurable surfaces would be able to provide more capacity to a user then they need it, with controlled energy consumption and circumscribed EMF to avoid interference from unconnected devices and to minimize their impact on the people around them.
There are now over 50 metamaterials product developers worldwide, who have received >$100 million in recent investment as the metamaterials market picks up again after a sluggish few years. Nissan is incorporating acoustic metamaterials in the 2022 launched ARIYA SUV for lightweight sound absorption.