Physica B 438 (2014) 1–8

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Physica B
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/physb

Metamaterials-based enhanced energy harvesting: A review

Zhongsheng Chen n, Bin Guo, Yongmin Yang, Congcong Cheng
Science and Technology on Integrated Logistics Support Laboratory, National University of Defense Technology, Deya str. 228, Changsha,
Hunan 410073, PR China

art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Advances in low power design open the possibility to harvest ambient energies to power directly the
Received 22 September 2013 electronics or recharge a secondary battery. The key parameter of an energy harvesting (EH) device is its
Received in revised form efficiency, which strongly depends on the conversion medium. To address this issue, metamaterials,
24 December 2013
artificial materials and structures with exotic properties, have been introduced for EH in recent years.
Accepted 24 December 2013
They possess unique properties not easily achieved using naturally occurring materials, such as negative
Available online 8 January 2014
stiffness, mass, Poisson0 s ratio, and refractive index. The goal of this paper is to review the fundamentals,
Keywords: recent progresses and future directions in the field of metamaterials-based enhanced energy harvesting.
Enhanced energy harvesting An introduction on EH followed by the classification of potential metamaterials for EH is presented. A
Phononic crystals
number of theoretical and experimental studies on metamaterials-based EH are outlined, including
Acoustic metamaterials
phononic crystals, acoustic metamaterials, and electromagnetic metamaterials. Finally, we give an
Electromagnetic metamaterials
Thermal metamaterials outlook on future directions of metamaterials-based energy harvesting research including but not
limited to active metamaterials-based EH, metamaterials-based thermal EH, and metamaterials-based
multifunctional EH capabilities.
& 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction structures. For example, vibration energy harvesting often requires

Up now, batteries have still been used as a major energy source
for wearable or portable devices. However, this way has several
intrinsic drawbacks. For example, the total size and weight of
batteries will occupy a significant fraction of an electronic system.
Moreover, replacement and disposal of large amounts of batteries
will be a nightmare due to their limited useful lives. As advances in
low power design, power consumption of electronics becomes
smaller increasingly, which opens the possibility to harvest energy
from the environment to power directly the electronics or recharge a
secondary battery. This kind of new techniques is called ‘Energy
Harvesting (EH)’. Nowadays, EH-based autonomous power supplies
are much promising for wearable devices, wireless sensors and
micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) [1].
Energy harvesting can include kinetic, electromagnetic and
thermal energy [1,2], in which proper media are utilized to con-
vert those ambient energies into electrical energy. The key para-
meter of any energy harvesting device is its conversion efficiency
that depends strongly on the conversion medium. In the past,
natural materials were often chosen as conversion media for
different energy harvesting devices. However, the conversion
efficiency is limited by the properties of natural material and
n
Corresponding author. Tel.: þ 86 731 84574322; fax: þ 86 731 84573361.
E-mail address: czs_study@sina.com (Z. Chen).
materials to response at frequencies lower than 300 Hz, which are
not available from natural materials. Moreover, the current focus
of vibration energy harvesting is to create small, lightweight
structures that couple very well to mechanical excitation [3].
Additionally, the direction of electromagnetic energy harvesting
is to improve the coupling coefficient with high Q factors using
artificial structures [4]. The solution of this problem is to develop
innovative energy harvesting structures.
In recent years, artificial materials and structures (AMS) have
shown tremendous potentials in many disciplines of science
and technology. In particular, metamaterials have attracted wide
attentions, such as phononic crystals [5–8], electromagnetic meta-
materials [9–12], and so on. The explosion of interest is due to the
dramatical physical properties for sound, elastic and electromag-
netic waves which are not available in natural materials, such
as negative stiffness, mass, Poisson's ratio, and refractive index.
In return, these non-traditional physical behaviors also provide
innovative mechanisms for energy harvesting. More and more
studies have been carried out to enhance the conversion perfor-
mance by metamaterials, including theoretical and experimental
investigations. The goal of this paper is to outline these existed
studies on metamaterials-based vibration, acoustic, electromag-
netic energy harvesting and then give an outlook for future
progresses.
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces basic
concepts of energy harvesting and classifies existed metamaterials

0921-4526/$ - see front matter & 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physb.2013.12.040
2 Z. Chen et al. / Physica B 438 (2014) 1–8
for energy harvesting. Current studies on phononic crystals-based
vibroacoustic energy harvesting are outlined in Section 3. Section 4
summarizes the recent progress of acoustic metamaterial (AM)-based
vibroacoustic energy harvesting. Significant researches on electro-
magnetic metamaterial (EM)-based wireless power transmission
(WPT) are presented in Section 5. Section 6 discusses some future
directions. Finally a simple remark is made in Section 7.
2. Fundamentals of metamaterials for energy harvesting
2.1. Basic concepts of energy harvesting
Energy harvesting is not a new idea, whose true legacy can date
to the water wheel and windmill. Harvesting energy from waste
heat or vibration has been utilized for many years. However,
nowadays the new content of energy harvesting techniques is
the range and the breadth of their applications. The modern view
of energy harvesting is to extract small amounts of energy from
the environment to power small autonomous devices like wireless
sensor networks and mobile electronics.
A generalized energy harvesting process is to generate elec-
trical energy from its surroundings using special conversion
mechanism, as shown in Fig. 1. Here environmental energy sources
may include kinetic energy in the form of vibrations and noises,
electromagnetic radiation, thermal energy, and so on. Generally
speaking, different mechanisms are needed for different environ-
mental energies. The direct output of energy conversion is always
an AC voltage, so it should be adjusted into a DC voltage for electrical
loads or recharging.
It should be emphasized that energy harvesting is not as easy
as it looks. Because the amounts of available energy being
harvested are often small, the conversion efficiency is a very
important performance parameter. In practice, an energy harvest-
ing device has to be closely tuned to its power source in order to
achieve high conversion efficiency, which depends strongly on the
conversion medium. Currently, metamaterials are being introduced
into designing innovative conversion media for high-performance
energy harvesting, instead of natural materials.
2.2. Existed metamaterials for energy harvesting
The history of metamaterials started in 1968 when a theoretical
investigation was first proposed by Russian physicist Veselago for
electromagnetic waves (EMW) [13]. More recently, the metamater-
ial concept has been extended in parallel to elastic and acoustic
waves (EAW) based on the similarity between the EMW and the
EAW. Experimental results have revealed that metamaterials can
exhibit exotic properties not easily achieved using naturally occur-
ring materials, such as negative permittivity, negative permeability,
and so on. According to currently published literatures, metamater-
ials used for energy harvesting mainly include phononic crystals,
acoustic metamaterials, and electromagnetic metamaterials.
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of generalized energy harvesting process.
2.2.1. Phononic crystals
Phononic crystals are periodic dielectric or metallic structures
capable of achieving negative phase velocity, which has been used
to represent many different periodic fluid, elastic, and combina-
tion structures. The term of phononic crystals was first investi-
gated in the early 1990s as the analog of photonic crystals [14].
Now it becomes a hotspot topic in condensed matter physics.
Phononic crystals now can be classified into one, two, and
three-dimensional ones according to their spatial topology struc-
tures. When elastic waves propagate through phononic crystals,
the special dispersive relation will produce. The frequency ranges
without dispersive curves are defined as band gaps [15–17], where
vibration and sound are forbidden to propagate. The realization of
bandgaps within certain frequency range can be clearly explained
by the negative effective mass density of the phononic crystals
[18]. The existence of band gaps makes periodic materials and
structures extremely appealing as mechanical filters.
Besides band gaps, one of the most interesting properties of
phononic crystals is the negative refraction [19–22], which utilizes
bands beyond the first Brillouin zone with Eigen frequency
contours convex to the origin at specific frequencies [19]. It will
cause a range of incident wave vectors to be focused in two or
three dimensions. In return, these properties of band gaps just
meet the challenges of low-frequency and broadband kinetic
energy harvesting.
2.2.2. Acoustic metamaterials
For phononic crystals, the wavelength is required to be on the
order of the lattice constants in the propagation direction at
the band-gap center frequency. However, if the phase speed of
the constituent material is significantly lower than that of the
matrix material, a new physical phenomenon of local resonances
may occur. This kind of AMS is also called as acoustic metamater-
ials. Liu et al. [23] firstly presented the concept of acoustic
metamaterial, also called as localized resonant structures that
exhibit band gaps, which provided a possible solution for the
length-scale problem of band-gap materials. An introduction
paper on acoustic metamaterials was published in [24]. Acoustic
metamaterials have unique properties different from phononic
crystals due to their own structures. For instance, their structural
unit sizes are smaller than the acoustic wavelength and each unit
cell contains its own mechanical oscillator.
Acoustic metamaterials are currently in the stage of infancy and
most of the works were explored theoretically. Li and Chan [25]
theoretically validated the possibility of the existence of acoustic
metamaterials and pointed out that negative effective mass density
and bulk modulus could be achieved simultaneously. Zhang [26]
presented the first experimental demonstration of focusing ultra-
sound waves through a flat acoustic metamaterial lens composed
of a planar network of sub-wavelength Helmholtz resonators.
Fang et al. [27] proposed a new class of acoustic metamaterial which
consists of a 1-D array of Helmholtz resonators which exhibits
dynamic effective negative modulus. The design, development and
characterization of acoustic metamaterials still bring forth many
challenges and opportunities in materials science [24].
 Z. Chen et al. / Physica B 438 (2014) 1–8 3

2.2.3. Electromagnetic metamaterials
The concept of metamaterials was originally introduced for
electromagnetic waves, which is now classified as electromagnetic
metamaterials. In nature, electromagnetic metamaterials are man-
made structures patterned on the sub-wavelength scale in order to
achieve exotic functionality, which possess peculiar electromag-
netic properties not seen in natural materials. The electromagnetic
characteristics of electronic materials are primarily determined by
physical parameters of the permittivity, the permeability, and the
conductivity. All lossless electromagnetic materials can be classi-
fied as shown in Fig. 2 according to the signs of permittivity ε and
permeability μ, where DPS denotes double positive, ENG denotes
epsilon negative, DNG denotes double negative, and MNG denotes
mu negative [28]. In particular, materials with simultaneously
negative permittivity and permeability in Fig. 2 are also called left-
handed or negative-index materials.
Pendry et al. [29] firstly presented a thin wire component
producing negative permittivity and positive permeability and then
proposed a split ring resonator (SRR) producing negative perme-
ability and positive permittivity [30]. Their innovative works opened
up the new research area of metamaterials. Later Smith et al. [31,32]
synthesized successfully the first left-handed substance producing
negative effective permittivity and permeability, and verified a
negative refractive index by practical experiments. Electromagnetic
metamaterials have particular properties, such as negative-refractive
index and evanescent wave amplification [33,34], so they can provide
potential solutions to meet the challenges of electromagnetic energy
harvesting for achieving higher performances.
In summary, one can see that metamaterials for energy harvest-
ing are nature made from artificial periodic structures. This kind of
special periodic configuration makes the structure possess some
exotic properties different from natural materials. These unique
properties can change propagation characteristics of vibration, acous-
tic and electromagnetic waves, which in return can cause wave
energy to concentrate in some specific frequency bands and results in
enhanced energy harvesting.
3. Phononic crystals-based vibroacoustic energy harvesting
Vibroacoustic energy harvesting (VAEH) has received extensive
attentions over the past decades. Basic conversion mechanisms
include piezoelectric, electromagnetic, electrostatic, and magne-
tostrictive transduction. However, traditional VAEH methods are
often based on linear dynamics. Under this condition, a VAEH
device has to be designed to operate optimally at or very close to
resonance, so that its electrical output can reach the maximum
value. Otherwise, its electrical output will drop dramatically when
it is at non-resonance [35,36]. However, it is fatal that the resonant
bandwidth of a traditional linear VAEH device is very small.

Fig. 2. Classification of materials based on the permittivity and permeability [28].

Fig. 3. The structure of the phononic crystals-based vibration energy harvester [35].
4 Z. Chen et al. / Physica B 438 (2014) 1–8
For engineering application, frequency ranges of most ambient
vibrations always fall in a broad and low-frequency band (e.g.
20–200 Hz). Therefore, typical linear VAEH devices are unsuitable
for most practical purposes. Recently, researchers have proposed
broadband energy harvesting exploiting nonlinearity to address
this problem [37–39].
By nature, mechanical vibrations can be looked as one kind of
elastic waves. According to basic properties of phononic crystals,
phononic bandgaps have the ability of forbidding elastic waves
from propagating within specific frequency ranges [40]. So as
long as vibration or acoustic frequencies fall in the band gap, the
strongly localized energy can be converted into electrical energy
using proper media. In this sense, the vibration bandgap of a VAEH
device can be equivalent to its resonant bandwidth, so that
broadband and low frequency VAEH will be easily realized by
phononic crystals.
Gonella et al. [41] discussed the interplay between phononic
bandgaps and piezoelectric microstructures for energy harvesting.
They proposed a class of multifunctional periodic assemblies
containing microstructures featuring layers of piezoelectric mate-
rial, shown in Fig. 3. The core of the device is designed as a
periodic structure, which leads to the existence of a phononic
bandgap. By virtue of the energy localization and the resulting
high strain fields, the microstructural deformation is ideal for
maximizing the energy conversion effect.
Chen et al. [42] explored one-dimension phononic piezoelectric
cantilever beams to widen the resonant bandwidth of a harvester
Fig. 4. Acoustic energy harvesting based on phononic crystals [46].
Fig. 5. Experimental energy harvesting configurations (a) with and (b) without the PAM configuration [50].
based on phononic bandgaps. Vibration energy cannot be dissi-
pated, so they will localize in some unit cells of the one-dimension
PPCB. Then PZT patches on these cells will become good energy
absorbers and can be used to convert localized vibration energy
into electrical energy based on piezoelectric effects.
A team led by Chen at National Cheng Kung University first
used a phononic crystal to harvest acoustic energy by putting a
polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) film in the middle of the point
defect [43–46]. Wang [46] studied phononic crystals-based acous-
tic energy harvesting by using a piezoelectric beam in the resonant
cavity, shown in Fig. 4. The acoustic waves at resonant frequency
can be localized in the cavity of the sonic crystal. The piezoelectric
laminated beam is placed in the resonant cavity, and the acoustic
energy can be harvested into electrical energy by using the
piezoelectric effect.
Yeh [47] calculated band structures of a phononic crystal system
with point defect and analyzed the acoustic energy harvesting
characteristic in the cavity of the phononic crystal. Lv et al. [48]
theoretically and experimentally studied a vibration energy harvest-
ing generator using point-defect solid–solid phononic crystal with
piezoelectric material. The results showed that the power harvesting
efficiency of the phononic crystal was much larger than that of a
conventional harvester.
One can see that bandgap is the basis of extending resonant
bandwidths of vibroacoustic energy harvesting devices. At the
same time, bandgaps of a phononic crystal are closely related to
its structural configuration, so many studies have been done on
 Z. Chen et al. / Physica B 438 (2014) 1–8 5

designing the structures of phononic crystals to match specific
vibroacoustic energy. Moreover, a phononic crystal can have
several bandgaps simultaneously, which may be an advantage in
practice. On the other hand, the central frequency of any bandgap
depends on the lattice constant of a phononic crystal. Large lattice
constant leads to low central frequency, so the whole size of a
phononic crystal has to be large for low-frequency vibroacoustic
energy. This property may hinder phononic crystals from low-
frequency vibroacoustic energy harvesting due to the limitations
of space and intensity in many engineering applications.
4. Acoustic metamaterial (AM)-based vibroacoustic
energy harvesting
As mentioned before, acoustic metamaterials can be designed to
exhibit non-traditional physical behaviors such as negative stiffness,
mass, and Poisson0 s ratio. These unique abilities of acoustic metama-
terials can be used to enhance vibroacoustic energy harvesting.
The US patent [49] reported a metamaterial-based vibration
energy harvesting device, which included a housing element
encapsulating a multiplicity of oscillators, mechanical/electrical
energy converters, and an internal circuitry. The significant advan-
tage of this invention is its ability of harvesting a significant
percentage of the total available energy in a vibrating structure.
Carrara et al. [50] studied deeply metamaterial-inspired structures
and concepts for elastoacoustic wave energy harvesting and exploited
metamaterial-based and metamaterial-inspired electroelastic systems
for performance enhancement in piezoelectric power generation.
The metamaterial energy harvester (MEH) can enhance harvesting
structure-borne elastoacoustic waves. In particular, they proposed
three innovative structures relating to piezoelectric power generation.
The first one is to use a parabolic acoustic mirror (PAM), which can
capture and focus the incoming plane wave energy in space where the
harvester is located. Experimental arrangements with/without the
PAM are shown in Fig. 5 and the results are compared in Fig. 6.
The voltage outputs across a resistive electrical load of 1.3 KΩ at
55 kHz are shown in Fig. 6(a). The power versus load resistance
and frequency for the frequency range 30–80 kHz is shown in
Fig. 6(b).
The experimental results demonstrated that the PAM-based
configuration could enhance power generation performance over a
wide range of excitation frequencies. Furthermore, the PAM-based
harvester shows an average of 1800% increase over the free
harvester case.
The second one is to use a 2-D lattice structure with an imperfec-
tion, which features a periodic array with an internal defect. The
localization of the energy at the imperfection can be exploited for
tuned energy harvesting purposes and the fundamental idea is to
Fig. 8. Acoustic funnel formed by the periodic arrangement of stubs [50].

Fig. 6. Comparison of piezoelectric energy harvesters (a) with and (b) without the PAM configuration [50].

Fig. 7. 2-D lattice structure made of aluminum stubs with an imperfection [50].
6 Z. Chen et al. / Physica B 438 (2014) 1–8
achieve a match between the defect resonance frequency and the
excitation frequency. A circular energy harvester and two rectan-
gular harvesters are shown in Fig. 7(a) and (b), respectively.
The frequency responses for two points inside and outside the
defect are shown in Fig. 7(c), where the first and second peak
frequencies (35 Hz, 63 Hz) correspond to the first and second
modes of the defect. Thus the localization of the energy at the
defect can be exploited for tuned energy harvesting.
The third one is to use a metamaterial-inspired array of acoustic
scatters hosted on an aluminum plate, where such a periodic
arrangement can manifest bandgaps and form an acoustic funnel,
shown in Fig. 8. The goal of this structure is to channel and focus
the propagating waves.
Among the three metamaterial energy harvesters [50], the first
and the third ones can realize broadband wave energy harvesting,
while the second one is fit for tuned wave energy harvesting.
Similar to the mechanism of phononic crystals, bandgap is also
the basis of acoustic-based broadband vibroacoustic energy har-
vesting. However, there are two different principles. The first one
is ‘acoustic superlens’, which can be used to concentrate vibroa-
coustic energies. The other one is ‘local resonance’, which can be
used to localize vibroacoustic energies by setting defects. Com-
pared to phononic crystals, acoustic metamaterials with small size
can generate low frequency band, so they are more applicable for
low-frequency vibroacoustic energy harvesting.
5. Electromagnetic metamaterials (EM)-based wireless power
transmission (WPT)
WPT means a way of efficient electric power transmission through
vacuum or atmosphere without using any wires or other substance,
which belongs to electromagnetic energy harvesting. WPT was firstly
proposed by Tesla over a 100 years ago [51]. In the 19500 s, Raytheon
Company developed high power and efficiency microwave tubes [52],
which opened the modern WPT era. At present, energy has been
transferred wirelessly by diverse physical mechanisms, such as laser
[53], radio waves and microwaves [54,55], inductive coupling [56,57],
and strong electromagnetic resonance [58,59].
5.1. EM-based microwave wireless power transmission (MWPT)
The microwave spectrum is defined as electromagnetic energy
ranging from approximately 1 GHz to 1000 GHz in frequency. A
complete MWPT system consists of three essential parts: converting
DC energy to microwave power, capturing the microwave power by
antennas, and converting the captured power to DC output power. In
particular, the rectifying antenna called rectenna is one of the key
components affecting the performance of a MWPT system. Many
Fig. 9. The fabricated metamaterial (a) and enhanced WPT system (b) with CMR [75].
works have been done on array rectennas to achieve a long distance
MWPT and higher output DC power [60,61]. However, there still are
some conflicts, such as the relatively high loss of array feeding
networks, difficulty in feeding network design, and antenna element
coupling causing reduced rectenna array performance [28]. Nowadays
metamaterial-inspired rectenna design methods have being explored
to overcome these challenges.
The ‘split ring resonator (SRR)’ is one of the most common
elements used to fabricate electromagnetic metamaterials, which
is composed of metallic rings with gaps. The first SRR was proposed
by Hardy in 1981 [62], shown in Fig. 9. Its structure consists of two
metallic tubes with a split on inner tube only, which is available from
20 MHz to 2 GHz. Metallic structure resonance can be achieved by
combining capacitance and inductance configurations. Until 1999,
Pendry [30] introduced a conducting non-magnetic ring array, which
became popular metamaterial components called SRRs. Its structure
consists of two concentric rings with splits on opposite sides. The SRR
axis should be parallel to the electromagnetic wave H field so that
currents can flow strongly on the structure. The SRR behaves as a
magnetic dipole and has negative permeability in a certain frequency
band. Later, Falcone [63] presented another resonator named com-
plementary split ring resonator (CSRR). The CSRR works as an electric
dipole and exhibits negative permittivity. The proposed
metamaterial-inspired antenna obtains 4.7 dBi and 2 dBi of measured
gains at 2.6 GHz and 4.5 GHz, respectively.
The first metamaterial-based structure to obtain enhanced MWPT
was reported in Ref. [64], where the cover used to enhance the power
transmission is made of a metamaterial with constitutive parameters
having a near-zero real part. Later, Alù and Engheta [65] presented
another cover which is made of a bi-layer of conjugate matched
single-negative metamaterials, where the first and second slabs are
made of an epsilon-negative and a mu-negative metamaterial
respectively. As an improvement of works in [64,65], Bilotti et al.
[66] proposed several resonant metamaterial-based approaches to
enhance the power transmission through sub-wavelength apertures.
The first one is based on the employment of single-negative
metamaterials, where two conjugate matched bi-layers are placed
across the aperture with one at the input face and the other one at
the output face. Numerical results demonstrated that a huge trans-
mission enhancement of the order of 40 dB can be obtained with a
double cover made of conjugate matched metamaterials. The second
one is based on the employment of resonant magnetic inclusions,
where one split-ring is placed in front of the hole to get the expected
enhancement of the transmission.
For EM-based MWPT systems, one can see that most works have
been done on how to design RF antennas using metamaterials and
also many methods derive from SRR. Following this idea, innovative
structures and configurations of SRRs can be further studied to
enhance EM-based MWPT.
 Z. Chen et al. / Physica B 438 (2014) 1–8
5.2. Metamaterial-based enhanced wireless power transmission
using coupled magnetic resonance (CMR)
WPT with CMR was firstly proposed by a research team at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology [58,59], which transfers power
in between two resonating antennas through magnetic coupling. It
has been widely studied as a potential breakthrough for midrange
wireless energy transmission [67–69]. However, the power transfer
efficiency of such a system still drops steeply as a function of the
distance between the coils, as well as a function of the resistive load.
To address these issues, metamaterials are being introduced to
enhance WPT with CMR because they possess peculiar electromag-
netic properties not seen in natural materials, such as negative-
refractive index and evanescent wave amplification. These properties
make themselves enhance the evanescent near-field and eventually
improve the power transfer efficiency. Kim et al. [70] analyzed the
WPT efficiencies between two metamaterial-inspired loop antennas
at 300 MHz in several aspects. In particular, negative-μ metamaterial
lenses have been increasingly proposed to improve wireless energy
transmission applications [71–73].
As an extension of the WPT with CMR technology, A group led by
Smith at the Center for Metamaterials and Integrated Plasmonics
of Duke University collaborating with Mitsubishi Electric Research
Labs (MERL) firstly theoretically studied on using metamaterials to
improve the power transfer efficiency [74]. The basic mechanism is to
use metamaterials between the transmitting and receiving end of the
power transmission to make it seem as though the intervening space
is not there. They have published several key papers [72–75].
Urzhumov and Smith proposed a relay system based on the concept
of the Negative-μ metamaterial lenses [74], which could greatly
enhance both the range of distances and the load resistance when
maintaining a relatively high power transfer efficiency. The results
indicated that the optimum coupling is obtained in the regime where
all three components of μ tensor are simultaneously negative. Wang
et al. [72,73] investigated using metamaterials to enhance WPT with
CMR by numerical simulations and found that both the coupling
coefficient and the transfer efficiency could be improved by negative-
index metamaterials. Later, Wang et al. [75] continued to testify their
studies by experiments. Firstly they designed and fabricated a
magnetic metamaterial by arranging the double-side spirals in cubic
lattice as shown in Fig. 9(a). Its effective permeability of the
metamaterial is around  1. Then an experiment system working
at the ISM band centered at 27.12 MHz is built to transfer power
wirelessly to a 40 W light bulb, as shown in Fig. 9(b). The experi-
mental results showed the power transfer efficiency of a WPT system
could be improved from 17% to 47% by the metamaterial.
Choi and Seo [71] proposed a high-efficiency WPT device with
CMR by using negative permeability metamaterial structures,
which was consisted of a three-dimensional periodic array of the
unit cell that the capacitively loaded split ring resonators (CLSRRs)
were periodically arranged in the cubic dielectric surfaces.
One can see that metamaterials are used to change near-field
characteristics in WPT systems with CMR, which is very different
in MWPT systems. As we all know that electromagnetic energy
will attenuate gradually during their propagations, so that in many
works metamaterials have been used to amplify evanescent
electromagnetic waves. By this way, high-efficiency and long-
distance WPT system with CMR can be achieved. The focus of
researches is how to design and fabricate proper negative perme-
ability metamaterials.
6. Future directions
Wide bandwidth, frequency self-adaptation, small scale, and
high efficiency, etc, are still future research hot-spots in the field of
7
energy harvesting. Moreover, several factors have to be considered
simultaneously in most cases. These challenges cannot be overcome
by natural materials. According to reported references, one can see
that metamaterials can be used to enhance energy harvesting by
changing wave propagations. Moreover, wave equation is the
common theoretical basis for metamaterials-based vibroacoustic
and electromagnetic energy harvesting. Thus future works should
focus on combing structural configurations of metamaterials and
wave equations. Without any doubt, the development of metama-
terials will further boost the progress of energy harvesting. Accord-
ing to the literature [76], the next stage of metamaterial revolution
will be the development of active, controllable, and nonlinear
metamaterials. Thus here several potential directions of future
progresses in metamaterials-based EH are discussed.
The first trend is to use active metamaterials for tunable energy
harvesting. Conventional metamaterials are often designed and man-
ufactured according to concrete requirements. Their material para-
meters are fixed once being made, so this kind of metamaterials is
called passive metamaterials. Passive metamaterials have some
obvious limitations [77]. For example, their material parameters are
strongly correlated and less free to be controlled independently. Thus
the biggest problem of passive metamaterials used for energy harvest-
ing is that they cannot adapt well the changes of their operating
environments. Nowadays the attention of researchers is turning from
passive metamaterials to active metamaterials [78], which can alter
their properties in response to an external input. Popa et al. [77]
showed how active acoustic metamaterials could be systematically
designed to achieve desired material parameters, where a transducer
senses the pressure wave incident on the metamaterial and an
electronic circuit manipulates the electric signal produced to drive a
second transducer that creates the acoustic response consistent with
the desired effective material parameters. Amr [79] theoretically and
numerically studied a class of one-dimensional acoustic metamaterials
with tunable effective densities in an attempt to enable the adaptation
to varying external environment. Casadei et al. [80] experimentally
demonstrated a tunable acoustic waveguide implemented within a
two-dimensional phononic plate, where a periodic array of piezo-
electric transducers are shunted through passive inductive circuits.
This kind of tunable acoustic metamaterial allows controlling the
dispersion relations of the system so that bandgaps can be generated
at selected frequency ranges without modifying the lattice constant of
the crystal. Tatara et al. [81] proposed theoretically an active material
for electromagnetic radiation with frequency of GHz by use of spin-
torque oscillators, where its negative refractive index could be
controlled electrically. It can be predicted that one of outstanding
challenges on metamaterials-based energy harvesting is to develop
novel phononic crystals, acoustic metamaterials, and electromagnetic
metamaterials with the ability of tuning their performance para-
meters. In this sense, active metamaterials will provide a potential
solution to deal with it.
The second trend is that metamaterials will further be extended for
thermal energy harvesting. Current works mainly focus on vibroa-
coustic or electromagnetic energy harvesting using metamaterials.
Because thermal conduction satisfies diffusion equations as well as
wave equations, the concept of thermal metamaterials was introduced
in 2008 [82]. However, this concept was only demonstrated experi-
mentally in 2012 [83]. One can foresee that metamaterials-based
thermal energy harvesting will enter a prosperous era in the near
future. Diana et al. [84] defined and implemented a thermal metama-
terial based on multiple ordered arrays consecutively linked by means
of transversal microspacers to obtain high thermal gradients. This kind
of metamaterials will enhance silicon-based thermoelectric generation
for energy harvesting applications in advanced micro/nanodevices.
Liang et al. [85] proposed an efficient solar energy absorber based on
metamaterial, which has a very high absorption performance in the
entire solar spectrum with wide receiving angle, omni-direction and
8 Z. Chen et al. / Physica B 438 (2014) 1–8
polarization independence. Thus, it can dramatically improve the
efficiency of the solar light absorbing.
The third trend is to develop metamaterials-based multifunc-
tional structures with energy harvesting abilities. Load-bearing
composite materials and structures with integrated functionalities
of sensing, actuation, and energy transduction are an area of current
interest in multifunctional composites. For example, as we all know
that vibrations in engineering structures are always harmful. It is a
promising way to harness these structural vibrations by simulta-
neously mitigating them. Moreover, harvested useable energy can
provide power for on-line sensing and diagnostic capabilities. Steven
and Daniel [86] developed multifunctional piezoelectric self-charging
structures, where piezoelectric devices are combined with thin-film
lithium batteries and a substrate layer in order to simultaneously
harvest energy, store energy, and carry structural load. However, a
potential issue is that added mass and increased drag may signifi-
cantly degrade structural performances. Fortunately, metamaterials
will easily enable the creation of innovative multifunctional energy-
efficient structures. James et al. [87] demonstrated the feasibility of
creating multifunctional negative effective mass structures by imple-
menting acoustic metamaterials at the structural scale, in which
active control could be coupled with the energy harvesting sub-
system to make the structure self-sustaining and self-regulating.
7. Conclusions
Metamaterials, artificial materials and structures with exotic prop-
erties, have emerged as a new frontier of science involving physics,
material science, engineering, and so on. In recent years, metamater-
ials have being extended from electromagnetic domain to vibroacous-
tic domain, and thermal domain. As an extremely exciting research
area, metamaterials-based energy harvesting has emerged as a current
hot-spot. Just during the past 5–10 years, many remarkable break-
throughs have been achieved to deal with different challenges in the
field of energy harvesting by metamaterials. One can believe that
metamaterials will bring a revolution on conventional energy
harvesting ways.
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the National Nature Science
Foundation of China (Grant no. 51275520).
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