Tailless Information-Energy Metasurface.

Programmable metasurface technology can achieve flexible manipulations of electromagnetic waves in real time by adjusting the surface structure and material properties, and has shown extraordinary potentials in many fields such as wireless communications and Internet of Things. However, most of the programmable metasurfaces have a common feature: a tail (electrical wires and DC powers), which is difficult to supply in some particular application scenarios such as canyons and mountains. To eliminate the limitation of DC power supply, we combine the programmable metasurface and wireless power transfer technology to propose a tailless information-energy metasurface (IEMS). The tailless IEMS platform can dynamically control electromagnetic waves without relying on an external DC power supply; instead, the required DC power is provided internally by the IEMS platform itself. In the tailless IEMS experiments, we have demonstrated our concept through the dynamic regulation of wireless channels and the wireless transmission of DC power. Our work provides a self-powered method for the programmable metasurfaces, expands the application scenarios, facilitates the miniaturization of systems, and makes it easy to integrate with other systems. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.