Metamaterial technologies for miniaturized infrared spectroscopy: Light sources, sensors, filters, detectors, and integration

The miniaturization of infrared spectroscopy enables portable and low-cost devices, which could revolutionize many scientific and technological fields including environment monitoring, pharmacy, and biosensing. As a promising approach, metamaterial technologies have been widely developed in miniaturizing all the individual components of infrared spectroscopy such as light sources, sensors, spectral filters, and photodetectors. However, a systematic consideration on the whole device level is still lacking. In this Perspective, we focus on the possible opportunities offered by metamaterials for ultracompact infrared spectroscopy. To start with, we review the recent metamaterial-related component-level demonstrations. Then, we draw attention to the potential role of metamaterials as a common platform for all the individual components. Finally, we discuss about the near field effect in metamaterial-mediated devices.