Ashwin K. Boddeti, Abubakr Alabassi, Vaneet Aggarwal, and Zubin Jacob. 11/26/2019.

Spectral domain inverse design for accelerating nanocomposite metamaterials discovery

. Optical Materials Express, 9, 12, Pp. 4765-4771.

Inverse design techniques in the context of nanophotonics have helped in discovery of compact and counter-intuitive structures/shapes. We introduce the concept of spectral domain inverse design to search through the optical trade-space (dispersive permittivity) of nanocomposite metamaterials. We develop a hybrid optimization technique that combines genetic algorithms and gradient descent methods. We utilize this technique to inverse design an ultra-thin thermophotovoltaic emitter coating material. Our work can lead to an efficient approach to search for new multi-functional optical/thermal metamaterials with desired complex permittivity.