Our daily lives have become more dependent on the manipulation of electromagnetic waves. Intelligent metasurfaces have emerged as smart platforms for automating the control of wave-information-matter interactions without manual intervention. These metasurfaces were created from engineered composite materials such as metamaterials and metasurfaces. We have made significant advances in metamaterials development and metasurface development, with a variety of forms and properties.

A research team was formed to examine intelligent metasurfaces. It was led by Professor Tie Jun Cui from Southeast University and Professor Lianlin Li from Peking University. “Intelligent Metasurfaces: Control, Communication and Computing” examined the future of intelligent metasurfaces.

Human understanding of many fundamental laws has been re-evaluated by this field. Many new devices and systems have been discovered, including cloaking and tunneling. The conventional structure-alone, passive metasurfaces, has been replaced by intelligent metasurfaces that integrate algorithms and nonlinear material (or active devices).

Intelligent metasurfaces possess three key properties: digitalization and programmability. They also have intelligence. They allow for the control of interactions without human intervention. Digitalization allows the metasurface to store, encode and decode digital information. Programmability is the ability of the metasurface to perform multiple functions from one physical entity. Intelligence is the ability of the intelligent metasurface to make decisions, self-program and complete successive tasks without human supervision.

Algorithms can play this important role. Intelligence is the heart of everything. Artificial intelligence (AI), especially in the areas of data mining and knowledge discovery, has seen rapid development. Nearly every area of engineering and science has seen the extraordinary benefits of deep learning. The metamaterials and metasurfaces fields have seen a significant positive impact from deep learning. It will undoubtedly lead to new directions in active and comprehensive research.

The wireless signals we already have in our daily lives can be crucial to the future development of intelligent metasurfaces. Intelligent metasurfaces can benefit from the development of wireless 6G communications, green IoT and digital twinning.

It is possible to imagine intelligent metasurfaces that can learn, make decisions and self-programme throughout their entire ‘lifetime’. The future holds many open questions that need to be addressed.