Books in the Synthesis Lectures on Materials and Optics series

The process of heating and reshaping plastics sheet and film materials has been in use since the beginning of the plastics industry. This process is known as thermoforming. Today this process is used for industrial products including signage, housings, and hot tubs. It also produces much of the packaging in use today including blister packs, egg cartons, and food storage containers. This process has many advantages over other methods of producing these products, but it has some limitations. This book has a twofold purpose. It is designed to be used as a text book for a course on thermoforming. It is also intended to be an application guide for professionals in the field of thermoforming including manufacturing, process and quality engineers, and managers. This book is focused on process application rather than theory. It refers to real products and processes with the intent of understanding the real issues faced in this industry. In addition to materials and processes, part and tool design are covered. Quality control is critical to any operation and this is also covered in this text. Two areas of focus in today's industry include Lean operations and environmental issues. Both of these topics are also included. Table of Contents: Introduction / Plastics Materials / Thermoforming Process Overview / The Forming Process / Part Design Mold / Tool Design / Quality Control Issues / Lean Operations / Environmental Issues

In recent years, we have witnessed a rapid expansion of using super-thin metasurfaces to manipulate light or electromagnetic wave in a subwavelength scale. However, most designs are confined to a passive scheme and monofunctional operation, which hinders considerably the promising applications of the metasurfaces. Specifically, the tunable and multifunctional metasurfaces enable to facilitate switchable functionalities and multiple functionalities which are extremely essential and useful for integrated optics and microwaves, well alleviating aforementioned issues. In this book, we introduce our efforts in exploring the physics principles, design approaches, and numerical and experimental demonstrations on the fascinating functionalities realized. We start by introducing in Chapter 2 the "e;merging"e; scheme in constructing multi-functional metadevices, paying particular attention to its shortcomings issues. Having understood the merits and disadvantages of the "e;merging"e; scheme, we then introduce in Chapter 3 another approach to realize bifunctional metadevices under linearly polarized excitations, working in both reflection and transmission geometries or even in the full space. As a step further, we summarizes our efforts in Chapter 4 on making multifunctional devices under circularly polarized excitations, again including designing principles and devices fabrications/characterizations. Starting from Chapter 5, we turn to introduce our efforts on using the "e;active"e; scheme to construct multifunctional metadevices under linearly polarized wave operation. Chapter 6 further concentrates on how to employ the tunable strategy to achieve helicity/frequency controls of the circularly polarized waves in reflection geometry. We finally conclude this book in Chapter 7 by presenting our perspectives on future directions of metasurfaces and metadevices.

This book, Introduction to Optics I: Interaction of Light with Matter, is the first book in a series of four covering the introduction to optics and optical components. The author's targeted goal for this series is to provide clarity for the reader by addressing common difficulties encountered while trying to understand various optics concepts. This first book is organized and written in a way that is easy to follow, and is meant to be an excellent first book on optics, eventually leading the way for further study. Those with technical backgrounds as well as undergraduate students studying optics for the first time can benefit from this book series.The current book includes three chapters on light and its characteristics (Chapter 1), on matter from the standpoint of optics (Chapter 2), and on the interaction of light with matter (Chapter 3). Among the characteristics of light, the ones characterizing its speed, color, and strength are covered. The polarization of light will be covered in the next book of the series, where we discuss optical components. Chapter 2 discusses various atomic and molecular transitions activated by light (optical transitions). Different kinds of natural bulk material media are described: crystalline and amorphous, atomic and molecular, conductive and insulating. Chapter 3 on the interaction of light with matter describes naturally occurring phenomena such as absorption, dispersion, and nonlinear optical interactions. The discussion is provided for the natural bulk optical materials only. The interfaces between various materials will be covered in the next book on optical components.The following three books of the series are planned as follows. In the second book, we will focus on passive optical components such as lenses, mirrors, guided-wave, and polarization optical devices. In the third book, we will discuss laser sources and optical amplifiers. Finally, the fourth book in the series will cover optoelectronic devices, such as semiconductor light sources and detectors.

The merging of metasurface and holography brings about unprecedented opportunities for versatile manipulation of light in terms of both far-field wavefront and near-field profile. In this book, a brief evolving history from surface plasmon polariton holography to metamaterial holography and finally to metasurface holography is introduced at first. Basic physical mechanisms that govern the phase modulation rules behind metasurface holography design are discussed later. Next, extended functionalities such as arbitrary polarization holography, vectorial holography, full-color holography, and hybrid holography achieved in the metasurface platform are presented. Surface wave and metagrating holography that bridges the on-chip surface wave and free-space wave is also introduced. In the end, we envisage practical applications of high-fidelity 3D holographic display, high-secure encryption, and high capacity digital encoding and also indicate remaining challenges based on metasurface holography.

Introduction to Photonic and Phononic Crystals and Metamaterials, by Arthur R. McGurn, presents a study of the fundamental properties of optical and acoustic materials which have been of recent interest in nanoscience and device technology. The level of the presentations is appropriate for advanced undergraduates, beginning graduate students, and researchers not directly involved in the field. References are given to guide the reader to more advanced study in these fields.Discussions of the physics of photonic and phononic crystals focus on the transmission properties of optical and acoustic radiation arising from their diffractive interaction in these engineered materials. The frequency transmission and non-transmission bands of radiation are explained in terms of the symmetry properties of the photonic and phononic artificial crystal structures. Basic applications of these properties to a variety of their technological applications are examined.The physics of metamaterials is discussed along with their relationships to the ideas of resonance. Properties of negative index of refraction, perfect lens, and unusual optical effects the new optics of metamaterial media makes available are examined. Related effects in acoustics are also covered.Basic principles of surface acoustic and electromagnetic waves are explained. These form an introduction to the fundamental ideas of the recently developing fields of plasmonics and surface acoustics.

Machine learning methods are changing the way we design and discover new materials. This book provides an overview of approaches successfully used in addressing materials problems (alloys, ferroelectrics, dielectrics) with a focus on probabilistic methods, such as Gaussian processes, to accurately estimate density functions. The authors, who have extensive experience in this interdisciplinary field, discuss generalizations where more than one competing material property is involved or data with differing degrees of precision/costs or fidelity/expense needs to be considered.