Harnessing the power of metamaterials

Metamaterials are structured materials designed to have properties not achieved in conventional materials. Materials of this kind that control light, sound, and heat transport have been previously demonstrated. In contrast, the design of metamaterials that can manipulate mass flow has been much less developed.

The long-term goal of our research program is to design membranes for separations based on metamaterials, to fundamentally understand, predict, and control their structure-permeation properties, and to enable highly-selective separation for a broad range of chemical mixtures.

This research program constitutes the first attempt to achieve separation via control of mass diffusion with metamaterial structures and will create novel tools to develop membrane-based separation processes in chemical plants.