Researchers at Macquarie University have developed a groundbreaking software package, TMATSOLVER, that can accurately model the way waves interact with complex configurations of particles. This tool promises to accelerate the design and development of innovative metamaterials, revolutionizing fields from energy harvesting to invisibility cloaks.
Metamaterials: Unleashing the Capabilities
Metamaterials are created to exhibit properties that would never be found in nature. These materials are designed to respond in certain interactions with electromagnetic, sound or other waves that are periodic and ordered.This types of material can be controlled much better than conventional materials. Metamaterials have the potential to impact a variety of applications, from super-lenses that can image molecular scale objects to invisibility cloaks that are capable of refracting visible light.
But being able to design and finely tune these materials with atomic precision is very difficult. Hard to fabricate at the nanoscale, metamaterials’ real power comes from their unique patterns of how their structures are arranged, requiring significant computational modeling and simulation. Enter the new software (TMATSOLVER) developed by researchers at Macquarie University.
WAVE SCATTERING SIMULATION – CHANGE OF 1 GENERATION
TMATSOLVER: A Multipole-based Program for Modelling Wave-particle interactions of Arbitrary shapes and characteristics. This is a major improvement to wave scattering simulation.
Before, researchers were limited by the time it took to generate numerical calculations used in testing theories about metamaterials. But with the TMATSOLVER, they can easily build a single simulation composed of several hundred scatterers — even those with complex shapes. This provides many new possibilities for proof-of concept tests for unconventional metamaterials.
At the core of what makes TMATSOLVER special is that it works with the transition matrix (T-matrix) that is derived from this grid of numbers produced by an object scattering waves. These advances have allowed the researchers to compute the T-matrix of red blood-cell-sized, arbitrarily shaped single particles much larger than the wavelength more accurately than ever before.
Conclusion
According to the European cooperative, TMATSOLVER is indeed a milestone in metamaterial research and design. In doing so, this tool is expected to dramatically increase the pace at which new metamaterials are designed and made real, enabling everything from super-lenses and true invisibility cloaks to energy harvesting technologies and quieter jet engines. With the global metamaterials market expanding, the findings of this research and subsequent TMATSOLVER software will be a stimulant to materials science and engineering across multiple sectors.
