Semiconductors: A new class of metamaterials

Conventional metamaterials shows negative refraction, which suffers from high intrinsic losses and difficult in fabrication, though a novel anisotropic semiconducting metamaterial offers a solution. The development of a semiconductor-based material exhibits all-angle negative refraction adding to the availability of materials for the construction of novel devices. Individual components of these metamaterials respond resonantly to the electric or magnetic components of the electromagnetic field. Potential of this new metamaterial still require considerable improvements as the semiconductor-based metamaterial does not yield a negative refractive index. This design is significantly easier to construct than existing metamaterials, which may facilitate the incorporation of metamaterials into existing electro-optical semiconductor devices.