Tunable Metasurfaces Based on Mechanically Deformable Polymeric Substrates

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have presented a review on the progress made in tunable metasurfaces based on mechanically deformable structures. This report provides an overview of such deformable metasurfaces and their application in metalens, metaholograms  etc. I found this review to be timely and will recommend the acceptance of this manuscript provided that the following minor revisions are made:

1) In Figure 2, can the authors confirm the description under SI? I believe this refers to silicone and not silicon, as silicon has a Young's modulus of about 150 GPa, which based on the values in Table 1, it does not seem low. Please indicate the acronym in the first instance. 

2) LDPE is described as having low Young's modulus and superior dielectric constant. However, in Table 1, their values are not available. I would suggest that the authors try to find the relevant information. 

3) Optional comment for Table 2 - The authors can consider including the year of the publications to help readers evaluate how recent the particular research is. 

4) Generally, I have a hard time relating the texts to the figures. My recommendation is to reference to the relevant pictures (if shown) in the text. For example, Figure 4(a) is from reference [16]. Please indicate in Line 313 - as shown in Fig. 4(a).

5) Some minor grammatical errors spotted: 
Figure 2: Under SI, double space (?) in optical transparency 
Line 307 and 308, use the acronyms PDMS and PET since not first use

Author Response

Reviewer #1:

1. In Figure 2, can the authors confirm the description under SI? I believe this refers to silicone and not silicon, as silicon has a Young's modulus of about 150 GPa, which based on the values in Table 1, it does not seem low. Please indicate the acronym in the first instance.

We are grateful to Reviewer #1 for drawing our attention to this issue. SI is the acronym for silicone as rightly pointed out by the Reviewer. We have revised the main text accordingly (Line 112).

 

 

2. LDPE is described as having low Young's modulus and superior dielectric constant. However, in Table 1, their values are not available. I would suggest that the authors try to find the relevant information.

We are grateful for the Reviewer’s comment. We have provided the relevant information in Table 1, as suggested by the Reviewer.

 

 

3. Optional comment for Table 2 - The authors can consider including the year of the publications to help readers evaluate how recent the particular research is.

We thank Reviewer #1 for this suggestion. We agree with the Reviewer and have subsequently provided the years of the publication in Table 2.

 

 

4. Generally, I have a hard time relating the texts to the figures. My recommendation is to reference the relevant pictures (if shown) in the text. For example, Figure 4(a) is from reference [16]. Please indicate in Line 313 - as shown in Fig. 4(a).

We are grateful for this insightful comment from Reviewer #1. We agree with the Reviewer’s recommendation and have referenced the figures and relevant images in the main text of the revised manuscript (e.g., Line 90, Line 122–123, Line 276, Line 411).

 

 

5) Some minor grammatical errors spotted: Figure 2: Under SI, double space (?) in optical transparency Line 307 and 308, use the acronyms PDMS and PET since not first use.

We have revised Figure 2 and the use of the PDMS and PET acronyms in the main text of the revised manuscript (Line 271).

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This review introduces the concept of flexible metasurfaces made of deformable polymer substrates, discusses polymers used to tune the properties associated with condonable metasurfaces, summarizes research advances and applications of metasurfaces aided by deformable substrates, and finally provides perspectives on future developments in biomedical applications. In my opinion, the work fits within the scope of photonics and should be published after minor revisions. The following are several recommendations that must be addressed before publication.

 

1.      There is a serious lack of description of pictures in the main article, and the author needs to be associated with the pictures given when introducing a particular work.

 

2.      The two works mentioned in line 378 do not cite the corresponding literature and the authors are requested to add them.

 

3.      In part 3.2, the progress of work related to meta-holograms is rarely introduced, please add 2-3 relevant works in the last 3 years.

 

4.      In line 884, the authors mention that “Collectively, metalenses, meta-holograms, structural colors, and plasmonic resonances are potential gamechangers for novel biosensing, bio-imaging, and wearable biomedical applications.” The authors need to add a summary and outlook to their respective advances in metalenses, meta-holograms, structural color, and plasmon resonances.

 

5.      The introduction to Tables 1 and 2 are missing from the main text section and the author is advised to supplement these.

6.      The following recent papers highly-related to the topic could be included in the introduction:

[1]    L. Chen, Q. Ma, S. S. Luo, F. J. Ye, H. Y. Cui, and T. J. Cui, “Touch-Programmable Metasurface for Various Electromagnetic Manipulations and Encryptions,” Small, pp. e2203871, Sep 15, 2022.

[2] Q. Ma et al., Smart metasurface with self-adaptively reprogrammable functions. Light-Science & Applications 8, 98 (2019);

[3]    Q. Ma et al., "Directly wireless communication of human minds via non-invasive brain-computer-metasurface platform," eLight, vol. 2, no. 1, 2022, doi: 10.1186/s43593-022-00019-x.

[4]    Q. Ma, and T. J. Cui, “Information Metamaterials: bridging the physical world and digital world,” PhotoniX, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1-32, 2020.

[5]    L. Chen, Q. Ma, Q. F. Nie, Q. R. Hong, H. Y. Cui, Y. Ruan, and T. J. Cui, “Dual-polarization programmable metasurface modulator for near-field information encoding and transmission,” Photonics Research, vol. 9, no. 2, 2021.

 

 

Author Response

Reviewer #2:

1. There is a serious lack of description of pictures in the main article, and the author needs to be associated with the pictures given when introducing a particular work.

We are grateful to Reviewer #2 for drawing our attention to this issue. We have described the figures in the main text and also referenced the associated authors in the main text of the revised manuscript (e.g., Line 90, Line 122–1123, Line 276, Line 411).

 

 

2. The two works mentioned in line 378 do not cite the corresponding literature and the authors are requested to add them.

We agree with the Reviewer and have cited the corresponding literature in the main text of the revised manuscript (Line 341).

 

 

3. In part 3.2, the progress of work related to metaholograms is rarely introduced, please add 2- relevant works in the last 3 years.

We have addressed this concern by including recent publications on metaholograms (Line 465–486).

 

 

4. In line 884, the authors mention that “Collectively, metalenses, meta-holograms, structural colors, and plasmonic resonances are potential gamechangers for novel biosensing, bio-imaging, and wearable biomedical applications.” The authors need to add a summary and outlook to their respective advances in metalenses, meta-holograms, structural color, and plasmon resonances.

We are grateful to Reviewer #2 for this suggestion. We have dedicated the last paragraph of the revised manuscript for our outlook and perspectives on metalenses, meta-holograms, structural color, and plasmon resonances (Line 801–821).

 

 

5. The introduction to Tables 1 and 2 are missing from the main text section and the author is advised to supplement these.

We have addressed this issue by introducing Table 1 (Line 122–123) and Table 2 (Line 766–769) in the main text of the revised manuscript.

 

 

6. The following recent papers highly-related to the topic could be included in the introduction:

We have accepted the Reviewer’s recommendation and included the suggested papers in the introduction of the main text of the revised manuscript with the following reference list: ref. [8], ref. [17], ref. [11], ref. [114], ref. [3].

Author Response File: Author Response.docx