Beyond Metamaterials: Metamaterialogy for Broader Material Horizons

Ji Zhou

doi:10.1016/j.eng.2026.09.008

Engineering ›› :202609008 DOI: 10.1016/j.eng.2026.09.008

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Beyond Metamaterials: Metamaterialogy for Broader Material Horizons

Ji Zhou

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Abstract

Materials are the cornerstone of technological progress and social development, and the evolution of materials science has always been closely intertwined with the advancement of human society. Against the backdrop of the ongoing new round of techno- logical revolution and industrial transformation, emerging ﬁelds- including next-generation information technology, embodied intelligence, new energy technology, aerospace engineering, preci- sion instrumentation, and biomedical engineering-have imposed increasingly stringent and multidimensional demands on material performance. In contrast, with the continuous advancement of materials science and technology, the performance of conventional materials is progressively approaching its inherent limit. For thou- sands of years, the improvement of conventional material perfor- mance has relied on two core dimensions: adjusting material composition (e.g., increasing mechanical strength via metal alloy- ing) and optimizing processing technologies (e.g., reﬁning grains through heat treatment). However, these two dimensions can only optimize performance within the scope of the materials’ intrinsic properties and fail to break the inherent performance constraints of materials. Metamaterialogy, a proposed transdisciplinary subdiscipline of materials science [1], applies the core principle of metamateri- als-namely, artiﬁcial-structure-driven performance-to the improvement and upgrading of conventional materials, introduc- ing a third dimension for material performance enhancement: arti- ﬁcial structure design. In this way, metamaterialogy provides a new path for breaking the natural limits of conventional materials.

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Ji Zhou. Beyond Metamaterials: Metamaterialogy for Broader Material Horizons. Engineering 202609008 DOI:10.1016/j.eng.2026.09.008

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